Love him or hate him - and it’s usually one or the other when it comes to the man, especially if he happens to be your prime minister - Italian politics will have lost one of its most controversial and entertaining politicians when the curtains are called on the 17-year political career of Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi.

Berlusconi, once seemingly the eternal survivor, has now taken the road of his Greek counterpart and has become the biggest casualty so far of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis. But his charisma was not enough to keep him in power for what will be one of the toughest economic challenges the country has ever faced. In the end, after surviving so many scandals and prosecutions, it was the European debt crisis and the markets that decided his fate.

Acknowledging he has lost support to govern the economically-troubled country, Berlusconi this week said he would leave office once Parliament passes through a series of EU-demanded economic reforms.

The move came after a routine piece of budget legislation failed to make its way through Rome’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies. Although Berlusconi garnered 308 votes of approval and none against, the abstention by 321 deputies left his government eight votes short of an overall majority, and it was evident that he no longer held a governing majority.

Following the vote, and as Italian opposition leader Pierluigi Bersani screamed for his resignation, Berlusconi was seen scribbling on a piece of paper, which an AP photo later showed to have read “resignation” and “eight traitors”, an apparent reference to allies who had abstained.

Now, he says, he will not only resign, but he will also throw in the towel on his political career. He intends standing down from the next elections, making way for his handpicked successor Angelino Alfano.

Once he does step down, President Giorgio Napolitano will begin consultations to form a new government. Berlusconi has said he would like to see elections, in which he says he will not run, early next year. The most widely discussed name to lead a government is Mario Monti, the former EU competition commissioner, a man with good credentials for the job given the country’s economic crisis.

Monti could be welcomed by Italian business leaders, who had once enthusiastically backed the leadership of the country by Berlusconi, one of the country’s richest men, but who now feel he has not done enough to save the country’s flailing public finances.

But whether his resignation alone will be enough to put the Italian economy back on an even keel is quite another question. Corriere della Sera’s leading political analyst Sergio Romano, in a front-page column this week, warned that unless a clear program emerges in a post-Berlusconi era ‘foreign observers will reach the conclusion that the end of the Berlusconi government does not necessarily mean the advent of a more credible, trustworthy government’.

We have all watched as the perma-tanned media mogul survived sex scandals and corruption charges, as he called his opponents communists, traitors and terrorists, and his ‘bunga bunga’ parties turned him into an international laughing stock.

The hair transplants and plastic surgery, the allegations of trysts with prostitutes and underage girls, his jaw-dropping gaffes at international summits, from cruise ship singer to the country’s richest man, Berlusconi’s rise and fall has been quite a spectacle.

Accusations still abound that he was in politics not for Italy’s sake but for his own, to boost his business interests and change laws to shield himself from prosecution.

He was the Italy’s longest-serving premier, no mean feat in a country that seems to be in a permanent state of political flux. But his charisma, beaming smile, his jokes and optimism failed to stand the test of the euro crisis.

When Italy became the new focus of the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis, the financial markets delivered their own determining verdict: Berlusconi himself was the problem and he no longer held the political clout to pass through the measures needed to boost growth and cut debt.

But after he goes, the trials - the sex case, tax fraud and corruption - will continue but once out of office he will lose the immunity from prosecution that he secured for himself while premier, as well as the ability to delay hearings by citing conflicts with official business.

One thing is for certain: his resignation will certainly not be the last we see of Silvio.