A French judge has ordered the Swiss food giant Nestle to re-open a loss-making factory outside Marseilles. It closed in June after nine years of problems, due largely to falling demand for the decaf coffee it produced, leaving it running at 30% of capacity.

Nestle offered all 427 workers other jobs within the group, or early retirement. But this was not enough for the French authorities, who say Nestle have breached their strict code on factory closures.

In the Fairyland of France, forcing investors to pay people to make stuff that people no longer want might look sensible. Elsewhere it looks plain daft. How will you keep up with today's needs if you lock workers into producing for yesterday's needs? And if future investors think you might force them to produce loss-making lines - well, there is a whole world they can take their money to instead.

As we've seen from the 'bra wars', such protectionism is now rife in the EU. But I doubt that most EU countries are this daft - they've just been infected by France. MEP Dan Hannan says we should escape the infection by leaving the EU. It might actually be more efficient for the EU to get rid of France, and allow the rest of us to recover from this madness.