In Las Vegas they call the really big gamblers – the ones whose fortunes can make or break a casino – the “whales”. For the European Union, Italy is the whale – the country whose economy and debts are so large that the fate of the single currency and the EU itself hang on its future.

Last week, Portugal became the latest country to succumb to the European debt crisis and to apply for a bail-out. But Portugal is a relative tiddler and its application for a bail-out was actually welcomed by the EU authorities. A Spanish bail-out, if it were ever to happen, would be much bigger – although the EU could probably still manage. But Italy is too big to bail out.

As Portugal applied for its emergency loans, Italy was pre-occupied by other matters. On a beautiful spring morning in Milan, Silvio Berlusconi, the country’s prime minister, was put on trial, charged with having sex with an under-age prostitute.