Fortunes of men in the spotlight will show what lies ahead for the EU

EUROPE EDITOR reforms, pointing to the country’s slight improvement in GDP growth and falling unemployment figures as proof that his conventional medicine is working and – given time, and extra doses for the judicial and education systems – will put Italy on the path to a better future.

But down on the streets where youth unemployment is 36 per cent and families are still poorer than a decade ago, the rise of Beppe Grillo’s virulently anti-establishment Five Star Movement clearly demonstrates the appetite for more caustic remedies.

If Mr Renzi loses badly and Italy’s banks require painful European rescue measures, then the Five Star Movement may yet get to take the reins of the Eurozone’s third-largest crisis. Will the technocratic, political centre hold then?

Similarly in Austria, a Hofer victory – based on an anti-Muslim, antiimmigrant platform – would not herald the immediate return of fascism to Europe, but would point unmistakably to the deepening EastWest rift over the questions of multiculturalism and broader liberal values.

Consider that just over 15 years ago when the late Jorg Haider of the farRight Freedom Party was invited into government in Vienna, a hundred thousand Austrians took to the streets of Vienna – this year a protest against Mr Hofer drew only a few hundred.

Given the largely ceremonial position of the Austrian president, the worry is not next week, but next year when the Freedom Party could win big in Austria’s parliamentary elections, and fellow far-Righters like Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Marine Le Pen in France will make their own bids for power.

Even if a full-blown EU unravelling can be avoided, it is clear that the union’s divisions are deepening day by day, rupturing North-South on the economy and East-West on fundamental questions of identity.

As we have already seen with the refusal to share the burdens of the migrant crisis and rising anti-German sentiment in southern Europe over austerity measures, such divisions diminish Europe’s collective capacity to address the challenges that ail an ageing continent.

Should Mr Renzi lose and Mr Hofer go on to claim victory, these can only be seen as ominous signposts of the road that lies ahead.