The eurozone crisis was never resolved; it was merely deferred. In recent times, Donald Trump’s presidency, the horrific Syrian war and Russian adventurism have all distracted from the single currency’s woes. However, the Italian election result made a new confrontation inevitable.
For the first time in a major EU country, two Eurosceptic parties – the Five Star Movement (M5S) and the Lega Nord – won a parliamentary majority between them. On 28 May, after the longest period in Italy’s postwar history without a government, President Sergio Mattarella decided not to allow the populist coalition to take office and appointed Carlo Cottarelli, a former IMF official, as interim prime minister. Mr Mattarella did so on the grounds that economic stability would be threatened by the parties’ proposed finance minister, Paolo Savona, who refused to renounce his long-standing opposition to the euro.
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