The result of first-round voting for the French presidency left Italian Premier Romano Prodi hoping that an Italian-style alliance between the Left and the Centre could give final victory to Socialist Segolene Royal.
Italy's centre-right opposition, meanwhile, looked forward to a second-round victory by right wing front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy on May 6, saying he would help steer Europe toward greater collaboration with the US.
The emergence of Royal and Sarkozy as the two contenders to succeed Jacques Chirac reaffirmed France's traditional left-right divide as centrist candidate Francois Bayrou failed to break the mould.
Prodi said he hoped Royal and Bayrou's centre would join forces for the second round, enabling the Socialist to garner more votes than Sarkozy and become president.
"(A Royal-Bayrou alliance) would bring an element of clarity and order to French politics. It would also be a choice similar to the Italian one," Prodi told journalists in his native Bologna.
Prodi's nine-party centre-left alliance spans communists and Catholic-oriented centrists, continuing over a decade of collaboration between the two traditions.
The biggest leftwing party and the biggest centrist one last week agreed to merge into a single force, called the Democratic Party.
According to analysts, the distribution of votes in France's first round of voting means that Bayrou's block of 18.8% could hold the key to the outcome of the second round.
Experts say Royal needs Bayrou's support more than Sarkozy, who can draw on votes from the far right.
Prodi said that Bayrou's influence in the event of an alliance would be welcome because it would make French politics more Europe-oriented.
BERLUSCONI 'ROOTING' FOR SARKOZY.
Italy's centre-right opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi was predictably much more interested in Sarkozy. "If Sarkozy wins, his presidency and that of (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel will make for a more Western, more pro-American Europe".
"We, obviously, are rooting for Sarkozy".
Gianfranco Fini, who heads National Alliance, the main rightist party in Berlusconi's alliance, found encouragement in the 29.5% tally notched up by Sarkozy. Royal won 26.3%.
If Sarkozy wins, he said, "It would be a concrete demonstration that, with right-wing values, you can give convincing answers to problems with which the Left has trouble".
Another National Alliance heavyweight, Gianni Alemanno, said France's exclusion of Bayrou from the final two candidates was important for Italy because it represented the "defeat of neo-centrism"
"Despite his prestige, Bayrou wasn't able to alter the bipolar logic that dominates all over Europe," he added.
But Udeur, a Catholic centrist party allied with Prodi, said the result, showed quite the opposite.
"The vote again shows that, almost everywhere, the Left can't win alone and without the contribution of the centre it won't go anywhere".
Fausto Bertinotti, the former leader of Italy's Communist Refoundation and current House Speaker, said the French elections revealed deep-seated problems in European politics.
"The crucial Left-Right divide remains firmly in place. What also remains is the crisis of politics which is compensated by the personalities of the political leaders rather than by political forces".
