Every European Union summit ends with solemn pledges to push through the difficult reforms required to free up labour markets, curb unions, overhaul welfare provision and rein in pension bills. Without radical change on all these fronts, politicians admit that Western Europe will continue its slide down the international league tables, unemployment will remain punitively high and capital will migrate to the vibrant markets of Central Europe and Asia. That fear haunts voters, too.

Yet theory is one thing, practice is another. In France and Italy, each halting step forward tends to be followed by voluntary or forced retreats. The French political establishment may be without equal in its combination of arrogance and pusillanimity. But when it comes to non-scoring draws, there is nothing to beat Italian politics.

The Italian election, a cliffhanger that will yield no convincing majority, has pitched an outgoing Government largely shorn of credibility against an implausible, because hopelessly divided, Opposition. Disillusion with Silvio Berlusconi is coupled with a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the centre-left coalition cobbled together by Romano Prodi. For Signor Berlusconi, a defeat would be richly deserved — not so much for his Government’s failure to make best use of an exceptionally solid majority during the past five years as for running a campaign so appalling, and so vulgar, that it has been a national embarrassment.

This election was the Centre Right’s to lose. It started well behind in opinion polls, yet a third of the electorate had yet to make up its mind and the Opposition was hardly in a position to help it to do so. Signor Prodi’s Union is a union in name only. Its 289-page manifesto is a wordy compromise between 11 parties and groups with barely compatible agendas, a document that served mainly to remind voters how the unreconstructed Communists led by Fausto Bertinotti succeeded in sabotaging reform when Signor Prodi was last in office. Signor Prodi not only bored voters during the campaign; the “assets” that prompted the Union to select the former President of the European Commission as its figurehead are no longer assets in Italy. Brussels has lost its allure and the euro is widely blamed for falling living standards.

This was a contest pitting the inchoate against the unspeakable. Signor Berlusconi’s cynical repeal of first-past-the-post electoral reforms deliberately made a clear outcome impossible. Yet by failing to cohere, the Centre Left has also betrayed the voters. Asked during the campaign for three words that would sum up a Union government, Signor Prodi replied: “Development, young people and solidarity.” Development and solidarity are not merely weasel words; in Italy’s case, beset as it is by union militancy, they may not be compatible. As for “young people”, his pledge to them was to reverse the Berlusconi Government’s most significant reform — the Biagi law, which allows for temporary employment contracts. This law has done more than anything to reduce unemployment in Italy, yet Signor Prodi insists that temporary work “destroys a generation” and must therefore be subjected to punitive taxation. Repeal would condemn millions of Italians to the greater insecurity of Italy’s massive grey economy.

No single measure would more powerfully announce that Italy was turning its back to the future. No doubt it is the purest coincidence that on this symbolic issue Signor Prodi and Jacques Chirac see eye to eye, but it is a typically European non-solution to Europe’s enduring problems. The remarkably high Italian turnout demonstrates how desperately Italians yearn to be better governed. If only their politicians were equally serious.