As long queues formed early on the first shopping day of the year outside banks and post offices, two members of Silvio Berlusconi's conservative government talked down the new currency, in contrast to other governments across Europe.

Defence Minister Antonio Martino said the initial euro-europhia could prove illusory and lead to a split between member states of the European Union.

"I hope I'm wrong, however there is a great risk that the the euro will end in failure."

"From now on, there will be only one monetary policy but that is not to say it will be to everyone's benefit," the Sicilian minister said in an interview with a northern Italian regional newspaper group.

"Nobody thought to introduce rules and parameters to fix the limits of a common monetary policy, when there will be divergent monetary interests one would believe that the European Central Bank will be sensitive to pressure from the bigger countries."

Italy's institutional reform minister Umberto Bossi weighed in with his own unflattering comments in an interview with La Repubblica.

"Personally, I couldn't care less about the euro, and I don't think it means anything to anybody else either.

"I hear what the people are saying. They say the coins weigh too much. This was a decision imposed from on high and the people had no choice in the matter," said Bossi, who leads the once-separatist Northern League party.

The elderly turned out to withdraw their first euro-denominated pensions and other clients were anxious to get their first touch of the new currency.

But passions boiled amid the euro-confused at a handful of banks and post offices in Rome, Naples and Palermo, and police were called in to keep order.

Long queues also formed at ticket offices in train and bus stations as ticketing staff struggled to come to grips with euro-lire conversions.

The 2,400 travel agents which have computer link-ups to Italian Railways were unable to sell tickets to clients because a software glitch meant they were unable to print tickets with the euro price.

On what turned out to be a bad day overall for travellers, huge tailbacks formed at motorway toll gates in the north.

Booth operators juggled with the two currencies, the ubiquitous electronic euro-converter and, too often, the protests of motorists unfamiliar with the new currency.

Toll operators Austostrade had been advised to give change in euro whatever the proffered currency, but were criticised by their employees' union, the

CGIL representative Dario Balotta said Autostrade was "very badly prepared" for the euro, and employees had been poorly trained and left without any reinforcements for the post-holiday return.

With a marked north-south social and economic divide and only one-third of its automatic teller machines converted to the new currency by New Year's Day, as well as an economy used to dealing in multi-digit lira denominations, Italy was always going to be the acid test for the euro.

Even trendy, bustling Milan had many shop windows showing only lire prices on Wednesday. "We haven't had time yet to change the price labels," said a sales assistant in one city centre boutique.

Rome vegetable stall trader Domenico Scognamiglio was tearing his hair out in front of a euro-converter.

"It's hell. How do the authorities think that we're going to face up to this dual currency business for the next two months. We don't have change to give customers. We're spending a crazy amount of time converting between the two currencies.

"We should have done like the Germans did, go immediately to the euro, without any phasing in period with a dual currency."

The Italian currency will continue to be legal tender alongside the new euro until February 28.

If some longed for German-style efficieny, many service stations on the outskirts of Milan were prepared to completely ignore the fact that the euro ever happened, further unnerving Italy's notoriously fiesty drivers.

Out of half a dozen service stations surveyed on the outskirts of the city, fuel prices were marked exclusively in lire, a lapse condemned as illegal by Italy's business confederation, Confcommercio.