Elena Carletti, professor of economics at the European University Institute in Florence, agrees that ministers have more to do.

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And once in power, notes Peter Mair of the European University Institute in Florence, governments lose popularity more quickly, not least because they are constrained by decisions taken in Brussels.

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"The overall effect is not going to be turning a light switch off" and banishing the entire US to darkness come the stroke of midnight, says Memo Diriker, director of the European-American Business Institute at Salisbury University.

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The Tanzverbot was first established by the church and was later adopted by many city governments starting in the Middle Ages, said Wolfgang Kaschuba, director of the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt University in Berlin.

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