Austerity mania is sweeping Europe. François Hollande's socialist government in France will become the latest to tighten its belt when it announces €30bn (£25bn) of spending cuts and tax increases on Friday. This follows Spain's decision to take around €40bn out of its budget with the aim of hitting deficit reduction targets agreed with Brussels.

Meanwhile, negotiations continue in Athens between Greece and the so-called troika (the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Union) over a fresh package of spending cuts and tax increases now estimated at €13.5bn.

All this is happening at a time when the eurozone economy is already going backwards. France announced zero growth in the second quarter – extending its period of stagnation to nine months. Spain's central bank warned earlier this week that the economy was currently contracting sharply, while Greece is already in the midst of a 1930s-style depression.

The austerity programmes come with pledges of economic reforms. Put simply, the idea is that too many eurozone countries have been feather-bedded for too long and now need a chill blast of reality to wake them up. Budget retrenchment will ensure that countries live within their means while deregulation, privatisation and more flexible labour markets will make them leaner and fitter. Before too long a revitalised Europe will be punching above its weight in the global economy.

All of which is total moonshine.

Not one of the objectives set by Hollande, Mariano Rajoy in Spain or Antonis Samaras in Greece is likely to be met. The first goal is that budget deficits will come down rapidly as a result of austerity. All the evidence so far is that targets will be missed because demand will be sucked out of already pitifully weak economies, with the effects magnified because so many countries are acting in the same way simultaneously.

A second fallacy is that the financial markets will be impressed by this self-flagellation. In the short-term that may be the case, but once the rotten economic data – for growth, unemployment and the public finances – starts to roll in, investors will take fright at the combination of bombed-out economies and rising debt-to-GDP ratios.

Finally, there is the misguided notion that voters will stoically accept all this pain, seeing it as a price worth paying for the restoration of national solvency and to ensure the future of the eurozone. In the fantasy world inhabited by European policymakers, the future is brighter, richer, more harmonious.

The general strike in Greece, the demonstrations in Madrid, the pressure for autonomy in Catalonia and the likely negative reaction in France to Hollande's budget, paint a rather different picture.

In the real world, the insistence on pain, pain and yet more pain means permanent recession, toppled governments and growing hostility to the European Union. If it eventually leads to the breakup of the single currency because voters decide they have had enough, those running the show (sic) will have only themselves to blame.