Whatever Nicolas Sarkozy envisaged dominating his moment at the centre of global economic governance, the question of whether the indebted and embattled Greek government would survive a hastily called confidence vote was probably not it.

Despite the French president’s valiant efforts to focus attention on his country’s agenda for the Group of 20 leading nations, of which he is currently chair, this week’s meeting of heads of government in Cannes will be dominated by the failure of a string of mini-summits decisively to bring Europe’s escalating sovereign debt crisis under control.

But if the eurozone is the bad news, the worse news is that the global economy still suffers from the same serious imbalances as it did before the financial crisis – and that this year’s political developments are likely to make them harder, not easier, to resolve.