Italy: Europhiles are in retreat

The Italian election results suggest Europhiles are "in retreat" as the anti-establishment party Five Star Movement is so far revealed to be the largest party in the election, foreign policy expert Nathalie Tocci has said.

Nathalie Tocci warned Italy will be "completely cut off" from Europe as the Franco-German engine prepares to relaunch the European project following news that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has finally ended months of political deadlock and formed a coalition.

Nathalie Tocci of the Instituto Affari Internationali Director told Bloomberg News: "Italy is going to be completely cut off from that game. So my fear is in all this that with the failure of even the attempt at restrictive politics, people are going to get angrier and angrier. I'm not quite sure what this is going to lead to."

She added: "Already we have a situation in which the country is split on Europe.

"This used to be a fantastically pro-European country and now europhiles are definitely on the big retreat as we've seen from these electoral results."