ITALIAN BONDS performed indifferently yesterday in the first European bond auctions since this week’s emergency EU summit in Brussels.

The Rome treasury sold €7.93 billion worth of bonds, less than the maximum €8.5 billion target, with the yield on Italy’s benchmark bond up 11 basis points at 5.98 per cent after the auction.

Analysts pointed out that Italy sold its three-year bonds at euro-record borrowing costs, prompting speculation that the euro zone’s third-largest economy remains at risk.

Rome yesterday sold €3.08 billion of 2014 bonds for a 4.93 per cent yield, the highest since November 2000 and up from 4.68 per cent last September.

Analysts claimed that the Italian treasury had sold “what it wanted to sell” but now finds itself paying very high interest.

Annalisa Piazza, a fixed-income strategist at the Newedge Group in London, said the results “weren’t very satisfying”.

If the bond auctions did not impress everyone, there was further reason for concern on the Italian front. The major confederated trade unions indicated clearly that a general strike may well be their united reaction to the terms of the costcutting package presented by Italy to its EU partners on Wednesday night.

No element in the package has provoked more union resistance than the measure that would make it easier to sack workers. Referring to this, Susanna Camusso, leader of the leftist CGIL union in Rome, said: “The future of this country will begin again when we manage to pull off the one legitimate sacking possible: that of this government . . . As far as the lay-offs are concerned, there is no need to sit down to a table to discuss them . . . we won’t be sitting down at any such table, we won’t be participating.”

No general strike has been called for the time being, but the fact that the CGIL, CISL and UIL confederated unions are agreed in their rejection of elements of the package makes such a strike likely.

As if that were not enough, media reports suggested that dissident elements in Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party have prepared a letter calling on him to resign.

The dissidents are allegedly concerned by reports that Mr Berlusconi and his coalition partner, Northern League leader Umberto Bossi, have made a pact whereby Mr Berlusconi has agreed to an early election next March in return for the Northern League’s support of the EU package.