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Although inflation in Italy has slowed to next to nothing, it is still saddled with the effects of earlier inflation and so is uncompetitive. What the advent of the euro has done to Italy – and also to several other countries – is to impose Germanic values in one sphere while having very little effect on performance in most others. It is the combination of Germanic money and Italian practices that is so devastating.  One clear lesson from this is that the EU is far from being the only factor affecting economic performance in Europe. Within the EU, it is possible to do things relatively well, and it is also possible to do things relatively badly. (The same is true for countries outside the EU.) But the Italian experience also makes it clear that the various things the EU supposedly does to improve economic performance aren’t worth very much. Yes, Italy is in the single market and enjoys all the much-vaunted advantages of that arrangement: it has a seat at the table when regulations and standards are framed; these rules apply both in Italy and across the single market; no customs forms are needed when Italian goods head northward; no tariffs are encountered.  Similarly, when Italian goods and services are sold to other eurozone countries there are no problems about exchange rate uncertainty or the cost of changing money. Yet Italy has not been carried forward on a wave of prosperity brought about by the absence of form-filling at borders and the convenience of operating in a common currency. Funny that. It may have had some very successful companies, but Italy has rarely been blessed with stable and effective government. This is why Italy has traditionally been an extremely europhile country. Most Italians felt quite relaxed about Rome ceding power to Brussels. But now, in reaction to recent appalling economic performance, coupled with the EU’s imposition of an unelected “technocratic” prime minister in 2011, more and more Italians are thinking radically about the future. In a recent opinion poll, 58pc of Italians said they wanted a referendum on EU membership and 48pc said that they would vote to leave the EU.  Leaving the euro would be a good start. If the new lira dropped by 20pc-30pc, as it probably would, within a couple of years Italy would be enjoying an export boom as it retook market share from other countries, mostly in Europe. The result would be a resumption of decent economic growth and a fall in unemployment.  Come to think of it, is that a key reason why many business leaders in the countries to the north are pretty keen to keep Italy in?