He [Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi] is playing the anti-EU card for everything it is worth, threatening to veto the EU budget and accusing Brussels of wasting Italy's money in a table-thumping showdown hardly seen since Margaret Thatcher. 

“We’re tired of ambiguities and contradictions. We’re tired of a Europe that promises but doesn’t deliver,” said his Europe minister in what is clearly an orchestrated campaign.

“We’re very tired of a Europe that is petty in what matters and overbearing in what is petty, and we’re convinced that if Europe doesn’t change, we’re looking at the onset of European disintegration,” he said.

Such bluster must be taken with a pinch of salt. Yet the bitterness is real. The EU did a dirty deal with Turkey, paying the autocratic Erdogan regime to shut off the Balkan route for migrants. A razor-wire wall now defends the ancient Hapsburg frontier. The migrant route has switched to Italy, and Italy has been left to fend for itself.

"The feeling is that other countries betrayed us. Renzi knows that bashing Europe is a way to promote himself and win votes, and that itself is revealing," said Mr Codogno.

Eurobarometer and Pew surveys come up with all kinds of answers on Italian attitudes, depending on the question.

But what comes through consistently is a bloc of 35pc that has rejected the euro entirely. It is held at bay precariously by another bloc that fell out of love with the project long ago but fears it would be too dangerous to try to restore the lira. Genuine defenders of EMU are scarce. The structure is held together only by fear.

David Fuller's view

There is a possibility that the EU will lose not only its 2^nd most important economy next year but also its 4^th largest if Italy’s Five Star Movement wins a referendum on 4^th December, scheduled by PM Renzi.

A feature worth noting in the Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s article above, is a graph showing the results of a PEW Research Center survey earlier this year, which asked people in the ten largest EU economies the following question: Do you Approve or Disapprove of the way the European Union is dealing with European economic issues?

Italy disapproved by 68% to 22%.  France disapproved by almost as much at 66% to 27%.  In comparison, the UK’s disapproval rate was 55% to 28%.  In contrast, of the ten countries only Germany and Poland approved, and by small majorities. 

If the EU has the ability, unity or will to turn this disapproval and disillusion around, we have yet to see it. 

Here is a PDF of AE-P’s column.