FOR YOUR INFORMATION, I HAVE BEEN VICTIM OF AN ITALIAN SCAMMER RECENTLY, I STARTED THE DISCUSSION BOARD THREAD REGARDING THE ISSUE. I WORKED VERY HARD RECENTLY TO FIND A DEFINITIVE WAY TO AVOID BUYERS FROM ITALY. HERE IS THE VERY SIMPLE SOLUTION I FOUND TO VIRTUALLY BLOCK THEM, WITHOUT BLOCKING OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES :
As I am selling authentic roman coins, it is very risky to ship to Italy, as Italy (Rome!) has strict laws about archaeological artifacts importations. I had more than one reason to block Italian buyers from purchasing my ancient coins! But, of course, as I have many great repeat buyers from other countries in Europe, I didn't want to block them all.
Before that scammer, I had 3 subsections for pricing & services in my SHIPPING section, in my items descriptions: CANADA, USA, INTERNATIONAL. Now I changed for 4 subsections: CANADA, USA, ITALY, OTHER COUNTRIES.
In the ITALY subsection, I only offer Canada Post XpressPost, at $47.50 for a small insignificant 100 grams, 6 x 9 inches bubble mailer! And price is not exaggerated, it is how much it will cost to ship to Italy with Xpresspost, and in case an Italian resident purchase one of your item, you have your tracking number to avoid scammer using PayPal claims (requires a tracking number to avoid charge back). And if it is not enough, like if you sell very expensive items, why not only propose PUROLATOR instead of Xpresspost, which is way too expensive and not reasonable at all for the everyday eBay buyer...
Of course, you cannot provide automated pricing using eBay tools. Your items will show "see description" in the search results under the "SHIPPING COST" column.
Also, it is a good idea to quickly send invoice, showing Xpresspost or Purolator cost, so the buyer cannot send payment using OTHER COUNTRIES pricing. It requires a little more work, but I am done now with buyers from Italy!
Visit my store and see one of my items description for an example, scroll down and read my SHIPPING section, you'll see how I did it.
Hope it helps!