This Europe: Crooner Berlusconi may need to sing a different tune

As the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, marks his first year in office, he is rumoured to be returning to his roots as a cruise ship crooner, singing on and composing lyrics for a charity CD.

He might do better to concentrate on the day job.

Mr Berlusconi, Italy's richest man, won last year's elections by a considerable margin after a slick campaign in which his face was plastered across billboards and piazzas across the country, contracts were signed with citizens and a book about Mr Berlusconi's life named An Italian Story was sent to millions of homes.

But for the first time polls last month reported a fall in support for his party, Forza Italia.

Despite a campaign that relied heavily on tax cuts, pension and labour reform, a clampdown on illegal immigration, and an improved infrastructure, his government has made few significant changes in these fields. Instead it has been a year of court cases, a general strike, roused passions, and limited legislative change.

Bridges and roads seem not to have left the drawing boards. Pensions continue to eat into well over half of welfare spending. The national debt is higher than ever, at €1,359 trillion (£850trn).

Legislation that has been through parliament, on false accounting, the collection of evidence from Switzerland, and the abolition of inheritance tax, it has been noted, may favour Mr Berlusconi himself and his family.

Changes the government has tried to make to ease labour laws have infuriated the trade unions, and roused enough popular opposition to prompt a general strike and a turn-out of more than a million people in protest.

Mr Berlusconi's refusal on election to relinquish his media empire, which includes three national television channels and newspaper and publishing holdings, alarmed many around the world.

Fears of media domination have not been helped by moves last week by members of his government to have four current affairs programmes taken off the air until after local elections at the end of the month amid claims their presenters are partisan.

Mr Berlusconi has also drawn criticism because his companies have been found guilty of corruption more than once, though cleared by statute of limitation which annuls a crime if the case or an appeal endures after a certain period of time. A trial in which he is accused of bribing judges is still in progress. The Prime Minister was also criticised for taking on the post of Foreign Minister when Renato Ruggiero stepped down in January.

"No government has ever been as precise or as punctual as ours in keeping to the pledges made to the voters," said the Prime Minister in an interview at the weekend in his own magazinePanorama.

The local elections will perhaps gauge to what extent he has convinced his electorate.