Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, seen on December 5, 2016, has seen his country's support for the EU plummet. Italy faces the prospect of more political gridlock following a March parliamentary election | Franco Origlia/Getty Images Italy most adrift from EU, study finds Nowhere has support for the bloc plummeted as dramatically than in Italy, study finds.

BERLIN — Nowhere has support for the EU in the past decade plummeted as drastically as it has in Italy, according to a study released this week.

Berlin-based think tank European Council of Foreign Relations (ECFR) ranked the country as 23rd out of 28 when it comes to individual support for the bloc. Ten years ago, Italy ranked 10th.

“Out of all founding members, Italy was once likely the most Europhile country,” Josef Janning, head of the ECFR’s Berlin office and one of the study’s authors, said. “There isn’t much left of that nowadays.”

Euroskepticism in Italy has been on the rise in recent years, particularly among the country's young generation, who have lived through several political and economic crises since their childhoods, with politicians apparently unable to solve them.

For its report, ECFR drew on publicly available data from European Commission reports, the Commission's statistics department and Eurobarometer surveys of public opinion to trace changes in attitudes toward the EU between 2007 and 2017.

Researchers also measured countries' larger-scale connection to the EU — or "structural cohesion" — by looking at economic ties between member states and their involvement in joint military projects, among other factors.

On both counts, the study found that Italy has grown more detached from the bloc than any other EU member.

"Italy was hit hard by both of the major crises during the last 10 years, the financial crisis and the refugee crisis,” Janning said.

“At the same time, out of all large member states, Italy is the one country where structural reforms are most needed. This makes the country less attractive as a location of business — which, in turn, has damaged its level of structural cohesion."

Italian voters will elect a new parliament on March 4. Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing coalition is leading the polls, but is likely to fall short of the 40 percent considered as the benchmark to form a coalition. The two other major political groupings — former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s center left and the anti-establishment 5Star Movement — are also not expected to get enough votes to form a government, which observers say could lead to prolonged negotiations or new elections.