After a dozen attempts on his life, Salvatore Boemi, one of Italy’s veteran anti-Mafia prosecutors, is, at 64-years-old, contemplating retirement. Looking back, he expresses satisfaction at progress in the fight against organised crime but anger and frustration that the rest of Europe has not awoken to its steadily penetrating tentacles.

“I am very depressed, very pessimistic,” Mr Boemi concedes, speaking in the southern city of Reggio Calabria, with an office view across the strait of Messina to Sicily.