At the end of a torrid week in relations between Italy and France, Nicola Danti, a Tuscan member of the European Parliament, rattled off his list of disappointments with Emmanuel Macron on Facebook.

First was the French president’s Bastille Day meeting with Donald Trump in Paris to set himself up as the key liaison between the US and Europe. Then the “theatrical coup” of Mr Macron’s summit with Libyan leaders, seen as undermining Italy’s traditional diplomatic role in the north African country. Finally, the decision to nationalise the STX shipyard in western France to avoid a takeover by Fincantieri, the Italian group.

“Instead of a new Schuman [one of European unity’s founding fathers], we are facing a little De Gaulle,” Mr Danti, a member of the socialist group in the EP and of the ruling Democratic party (PD) in Italy, said.

Since Europe’s financial crisis any Italian resentment at a fellow EU member state has usually been aimed at Germany and Chancellor Angela Merkel, mainly for pushing austerity-driven economic policies and excessively tough EU banking regulations. But Mr Macron has managed to supplant Ms Merkel in the role of Italy’s greatest European bugbear, just two months into his presidency.

In part, this is a function of outsized expectations placed on Mr Macron in Rome. His election was widely cheered in Italy as charting a course to deepen and reinvigorate EU integration. Italy is traditionally a Europhile country but has experienced a rise in populist and Eurosceptic political forces, such as the Five Star Movement and the Northern League. With a general election due in less than year, some in the PD hoped that they could ride to victory partly on Mr Macron’s coat-tails.

That no longer seems possible, as Italian frustration with his latest moves boils over. In Friday’s Corriere della Sera newspaper, a cartoon compared Mr Macron to Zinedine Zidane, the French footballer who headbutted an Italy defender in the 2006 World Cup final. Ferruccio De Bortoli, the former editor of Corriere, suggested that Mr Macron was acting like a bully, picking on Italy specifically to prove a point. “STXFrance and not just that: [Macron] is hitting the weak to seem stronger in Europe,” Mr De Bortoli tweeted.

Mr Macron did try to patch things up in a phone call with Paolo Gentiloni, Italy’s prime minister, and there is chatter about the French president possibly visiting Rome. Bruno Le Maire, France’s economy minister, is expected on Tuesday in the Italian capital to try to seek compromise on STX.

But the damage has already been done and Mr Macron has touched sensitive nerves in Italian politics. The STX nationalisation not only suggests a lack of trust in Italian ownership and defies the notion of open investment in Europe; it was particularly humiliating because French investors have been snapping up a number of key Italian assets in recent years, with no objections from the government. The highest profile is Vivendi’s successful battle for control of Telecom Italia, the country’s biggest telecoms operator, which resulted in the departure of Flavio Cattaneo, chief executive, just days ago.

On Libya, Italian officials are not just feeling sidelined by Mr Macron’s diplomatic foray into their terrain: many believe his efforts could backfire. It has not helped that Mr Macron has shown little willingness to give Italy relief in handling the thousands of migrants arriving on its southern shores every month, which is the biggest political liability for the PD-led government at the moment.

The rude awakening for Italy has been that Mr Macron’s interpretation of European integration is much more likely to involve a Franco-German axis with Ms Merkel rather than broader co-operation with other EU countries, including Italy. This could still turn to Italy’s benefit, especially if Mr Macron is able to extract concessions from Berlin on reforms of the eurozone. But fears of isolation in Rome are growing — which is not how the Macron era was supposed to turn out.