It is a measure of how bad things are on both sides of the Rhine when François Hollande goes public on his exasperation with Angela Merkel.

In his interview with the Guardian and other European newspapers, the French president delivered a catalogue of complaints about the German chancellor's prescriptions for resolving the euro crisis.

There is nothing unusual about frictions and poor chemistry between French and German leaders, despite the entrenched, deeply embedded relationship that is much more "special" than fond British ideas of the transatlantic axis.

Merkel and Hollande's predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, worked together, but were scathing about one another in private. Every Franco-German couple going back to Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle displayed similar symptoms of being caught in a love-hate affair. But they kept it private.

The usual pattern for these big EU summits is that Berlin and Paris get together on the eve of the meeting and deliver a common position that forms the basis for a summit deal.

Things could hardly be more different this time. The French leader has delivered a salvo of criticisms at the Germans just before the EU's leaders gather in Brussels for the first time since June.

The French leader's move is bold and all the more unexpected for being so public. It's also risky. He clearly feels Merkel is not listening to him and other key crisis leaders, such as Mario Monti in Italy or Mariano Rajoy in Spain. He also seems to be blaming Berlin for 30 months of prevarication and dithering on the crisis, wasting a lot of time, and then disguising its reluctance to act by presenting grandiose ambitious schemes for the EU that would take a decade to realise.

These criticisms of Merkel are common currency in Brussels and the capitals of the EU. But they acquire a new weight when delivered in public from the Elysée Palace. There are many who will cheer, and not only in Athens, Madrid or Rome.

Recession is the bigger problem, not budget deficits and debt, Hollande contends. Enough austerity, it is killing rather than curing. German attacks on the European Central Bank because of its new interventionism are misplaced and wrong, the French leader charges. Germany, too, can help to rebalance the European economy by boosting domestic demand through pay rises and tax cuts, he adds.

Many will applaud this diagnosis.

But there is also a very French agenda, also pursued by Sarkozy, behind some of Hollande's proposals, notably on how to run the eurozone. He wants national leaders to take control through monthly summits of the 17 presidents, chancellors or prime ministers and the eurogroup of 17 finance ministers to be beefed up.

In other words, powers and decision-taking should be left to national leaders, inevitably producing stitch-ups of the kind that have failed in the past. It is about avoiding giving new powers to Brussels over national economic policymaking and tempering the German-led push for enforcing fiscal disciplines, including automatic penalties for recalcitrants, policed by the European commission.

Running the eurozone through a council of national leaders would also enhance French clout as France would be backed by the zone's third and fourth economies, Italy and Spain, while Germany's allies would be smaller.

This move will annoy Brussels, but also smaller eurozone countries such as the Dutch, fearing the big countries will run things and overrule them. That was the trouble with the Merkel-Sarkozy arrangement.

Hollande's position is both strong and weak. There is the inherent strength of being a newly elected president of France. But he oversees a sclerotic economy that every month is forfeiting its competitiveness and widening the performance gap with Germany following years of failure by all French leaders to reform. If he can tackle these taboos and turn that record around, he will be in a much stronger position vis-à-vis Berlin.

But his appeal and his warning demonstrate he is not backing down in the argument with Germany about how to make Europe fit for the future. He is also looking for a new deal with Merkel. Without that compromise, Europe's worst ever crisis will get worse yet.