When will Europe wake up that it is the problem?

US President Donald Trump talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel surrounded by other G7 leaders during a meeting of the G7 Summit in La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada, last year.

Were there a shred of honesty left in international diplomacy, the G7 summit, which Scott Morrison will be attending this weekend, would turn its mind to the sick man of ­Europe, namely Europe itself.

The continent’s economic predicament is as stark as can be. It is not only that after a recovery so weak as to barely qualify as anaemic, the European economy is tanking, greatly increasing the risk of a global downturn.

It is also that the negative interest rates that now predominate in the eurozone imply that investors expect Europe’s economy to shrink over the longer term, so that a dollar invested today will ­return less than a dollar tomorrow.

But while the economic outlook is sombre, the political prospects are gloomier yet.

To say that is not to sugar coat the international situation: of the G7 leaders gathering in Biarritz, only Japan’s Shinzo Abe heads a government that is performing reasonably strongly in the opinion polls.

Justin Trudeau faces an election in October that he may well lose. And Donald Trump’s ­approval ratings are far from being high enough to guarantee him ­re-election next year.

However, those leaders’ woes are a mere bagatelle compared with Europe’s plight.

Yes, Trudeau and Trump may be defeated; but regardless of whether one considers that cause for regret or jubilation, it would, in each case, not be a substantial ­departure from politics as usual.

In contrast, the political crisis of the major European countries is systemic. The governing parties have lost the authority that comes from solid popular support; yet their traditional rivals no longer offer a credible alternative.

With a “no exit” sign hovering over the resulting impasse, the outcome can only be a steady ­erosion in the political system’s legitimacy.

Nowhere is that clearer than in France. Never having recovered from the battering he received at the hands of the gilets jaunes, the latest polls suggest only 25 per cent of the French electorate approve of Emmanuel Macron’s handling of the presidency, while fully 67 per cent disapprove.

But with both the centre-left and the centre-right parties imploding, voters have retreated into a sullen resentment, which, as Macron himself recently admitted, may well fuel another round of violent protests in the European autumn.

The outlook in Germany is only superficially better. It is true Angela Merkel remains widely ­respected, but the centre-right grouping that she leads has never been so unpopular. At this stage in the political cycle it should have the support of 35 per cent to 40 per cent of the electorate. Instead, in an entirely unprecedented rout, it has struggled to retain the support of a quarter.

However, far from translating into a boost for the Social Democratic Party, voters have hammered the SDP even more severely, creating an atmosphere of political uncertainty that dampens investment and aggravates the economic slowdown.

As for the UK, Boris Johnson’s ascendancy has led to a slight improvement in the Conservative Party’s polling but its support is still very far below the 42 per cent of the vote the party received at the 2017 general election.

Here too, however, the governing party’s loss has not bolstered the standing of its traditional rival, with Labour plummeting in the polls to levels that imply a lower share of the vote than it has ­received at any time since 1910.

Finally, Italy is once again in chaos, as an unholy alliance of the traditional establishment parties and the populist Five Stars movement desperately tries to prevent an election that Matteo Salvini’s Northern League is likely to win. The final outcome of the shenanigans is hard to predict; however, the blatant dishonesty of Salvini’s opponents is sure to erode what ­little confidence Italians have left in their institutions.

But the European crisis does not end there. Rather, even setting aside the trauma of a hard Brexit, it reaches deep into Europe’s core institutions. Thus, ignoring their repeated pledges to democratise the EU, Germany and France swept aside the preferences of the European Parliament in a deal that delivered the presidency of the European Commission and of the European Central Bank to their chosen candidates — both of whom are tarnished by accusations of incompetence and outright impropriety.

At the same time, the EU itself is becoming even more dysfunctional. It has now triggered a confrontation with Hungary, and is threatening one with Poland.

As those battles play themselves out, the growing divide ­between eastern and western ­Europe will make it ever harder to secure the consensus on which the EU rests.

And adding to the risks that creates, the measures the eurozone has adopted to prevent a ­repeat of the 2010 sovereign debt crisis are grossly inadequate, leaving the European economy seriously exposed should the turmoil in Italy undermine the country’s still fragile banks and cause investors to flee from its bonds.

Yet it is not that litany of faults and failings that is most worrying: it is the stubborn refusal to accept that they exist, much less confront them head-on.

That is, no doubt, understandable: instead of frankly addressing the crisis of European democracy, it is much less threatening to bloviate about climate change, as Ursula von der Leyen, the new head of the European Council, did earlier this month in making a trillion-dollar “Green Deal” the EU’s top priority.

Don Quixote, who epitomised a declining Spanish nobility that was trapped in dreams of ancient glory, merely tilted at windmills; today, combining waste with futility, his worthy descendants can think of nothing better than to build them.

It is as if the elites of western Europe’s major countries, cushioned in a lifestyle of extraordinary comfort, have reverted to an infantile sense of irresponsibility, abandoning the reality principle along the way.

But that too is understandable. After all, successive generations in western Europe have been sheltered from harsh choices, not only by decades of lavish public spending but by the beneficent protection of America’s security umbrella.

Indeed, every momentous ­European crisis of the postwar era — the Greek civil war, the Berlin blockade, the revolts in Hungary and Poland, the collapse of the ­Soviet Union, the murderous conflict in what was once Yugoslavia — was primarily managed, and ultimately resolved, by the US, allowing Europe’s elites to forget what it means to be truly responsible for one’s fate.

Nor will the G7, which they dominate, force them to remember. On the contrary, at an event where the tedium is the message, it will perpetuate their state of amnesia, allowing Macron to indulge his fantasies of restoring France’s lost grandeur.

Unfortunately, the fantasies of Europe’s leaders have a habit of ending badly. And the present crop of illusions, delusions and confusions promises to be no ­exception. If Scott Morrison can help puncture their balloon, he will have done Europe, and the wider world, a favour.