THE TELEGRAPH: Italy is the latest eurozone nation to be threatened by finacial woe - after Silvio Berlusconi assured his compatriots for months that they had weathered the crisis.
They were the advance guard of an army of Italians whose anger is rising as their country joins the rest of the continent struggling with the worst economic crisis of recent times.
Waving banners, blowing whistles and chanting "Shame!", hundreds of public service workers rallied outside Italy's parliament in Rome to protest against the austerity package announced by the centre-Right government of Silvio Berlusconi.
The measures aim to shave 24 billion euros off government spending in the next two years.
They include a crackdown on tax evasion and welfare fraud, a three year salary freeze for Italy's 3.4 million civil servants and substantial cuts to regional government which will almost certainly result in less money for hospitals and schools.
In pushing through the package with an emergency parliamentary decree, Italy joined Portugal and Spain in trying to fend off contagion from the crisis which has brought deadly riots to Greece and shaken confidence in the euro. The cuts are greater in scale than the £6 billion of immediate savings recently announced by Britain's new coalition government, but are comparable with what the UK may face over the next 12 months.
The protesters, mostly women, who had gathered outside Italy's lower house of parliament in Piazza di Montecitorio, a cobbled square lined with expensive hotels and boutiques, were stung by the announcement and fearful for the future.
For months Mr Berlusconi had been assuring his countrymen that Italy has weathered the global economic crisis much better than the rest of Europe.
The government's overnight switch from breezy optimism to dire warnings of "very tough sacrifices" in order to spare Italy from a Greek-style bailout, and associated international ignominy attached, made the announcement of the austerity package all the more shocking to those with most to lose. Advance guard of angry women lead Italians into European protests over austerity cuts >>> Nick Squires in Rome | Saturday, May 29, 2010
