The Kaiser Wilhelm Canal in Kiel is crumbling. Last year, the authorities had to close the 60-mile shortcut from the Baltic to the North Sea for two weeks, something that had never happened through two world wars. The locks had failed.

Large ships were forced to go around the Skagerrak, imposing emergency surcharges. The canal was shut again last month because sluice gates were not working, damaged by the constant thrust of propeller blades. It has been a running saga of problems, the result of slashing investment to the bone, and cutting maintenance funds in 2012 from €60m (£47m) a year to €11m.

This is an odd way to treat the busiest waterway in the world, letting through 35,000 ships a year, so vital to the Port of Hamburg. It is odder still given that the German state can borrow funds for five years at an interest rate of 0.15pc. Yet such is the economic policy of Germany, worshipping the false of god of fiscal balance.

The Bundestag is waking up to the economic folly of this. It has approved €260m of funding to refurbish the canal over the next five years. Yet experts say it needs €1bn, one of countless projects crying out for money across the derelict infrastructure of a nation that has forgotten how to invest, sleepwalking into decline.

France may look like the sick of man of Europe, but Germany’s woes run deeper, rooted in mercantilist dogma, the glorification of saving for its own sake, and the corrosive psychology of ageing.

David Fuller's view

I have been fretting about European Union GDP growth for as long as the EU has existed, as have many other commentators.  There are many factors involved, which I have mentioned previously, but serial underperformance in terms of economic growth has to be an issue of governance. 

To quote a German contact in London earlier this week: “Sadly, Germany’s government and the EU have not used the current economic crisis to address known problems, not least in terms of bureaucracy and economic stimulus.”

London benefits from over 600,000 enterprising residents from France, including my next door neighbour.  They love their country but there is a common refrain that I often hear: “Never try to open a business in France.”

This is sad, and the unemployment problems in France and some EU countries are alarming.