Three-time premier Silvio Berlusconi's endless legal woes have deepened considerably after a Milan appeals court confirmed his conviction for tax fraud - and raised the possibility that he will be forced to leave parliament.

Former deputy leader of the centre-left Democratic party to form new government

You’d think the people running things in Italy were deliberating over whom to vote for in the student union by their behaviour – not choosing the head of state in G8 country, which has failed to swear in a government two months after a general election.

First a third world war, eco-disaster and mass death. Then global government for the lucky...

Prospect of new elections in eurozone’s most  indebted economy just one month after last poll

Italy looks set to get another stop-gap prime minister with the centre-left failing to get the backing of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) to form a government.

Italy’s would-be Prime Minister has said that “only a mentally ill person” would want the job right now, as the eurozone’s third biggest democracy continues to tie itself in knots.

The head of the protest movement that stunned Italy’s political establishment by snatching a quarter of the vote in last month’s general election has spelt out his Eurosceptic credentials, with comments that will send shivers up the spine of other eurozone members.

A population fed up with corrupt and self-serving politics produced this astonishing result, and the parallels with our national situation are clear

If these results do not shake Europe out of its apathy, then perhaps nothing will

Elsa Fornero, an academic whose job it was to modernise a rigid labour market, tells Michael Day what went wrong

For a country that has so much going for it, in the way of lifestyle, landscape and flair, Italy has an infuriating knack of doing just the wrong thing. And the fear must be, as Italians prepare to vote in elections that are as crucial for the European Union as they are for Italy, that the country is reverting to type.

Honest, inexperienced politicians may not be the answer for a nation on the edge of economic disaster. Plus, the rise of Japan's concrete jungle