Raise prices, get rid the riff-raff. European countries are now following the American model for making travel more comfortable for the rich.

Italy has seen prices rise on average by 2.8 per cent in the past year, higher than France (1.9 per cent) or Germany (1.1 per cent) though lower than Spain (3 per cent). The EU average is 2.1 per cent. But the average figure disguises some extraordinary jumps: railway sleeping cars and camping site charges, for example, have risen 32.5 per cent in the past year, postal banking charges have gone up more than 26 per cent and cigarettes more than 14 per cent. The economy is now officially in recession.

The general consensus, in this normally europhiliac country, is that the "euro effect" is to blame: under the cover of confusion when the currency was introduced, businesses rounded up their prices and have continued doing so - even though in supermarkets prices are marked in euros and lira.

Antonio Marzano, the Minister for Productive Activity, said: "There is no price emergency. Consumers should go on strike every day against shopkeepers who raise their prices unfairly ... A strike against all shops hits the nation's gross domestic product, whereas if they struck only against the crafty operators they would spend more with those who behave correctly."

Gugliemo Epifani, a union leader, said the government had "done nothing" to restrain prices. "It's a relative alarm," he said. "We are certainly not talking about the sort of inflation we had 20 years ago, but when businesses say they are losing out in international competition, and when families say they can't make their money stretch to the end of the month because of the continual rises, it's clear that there is growing social hardship