The euro crisis returns as Italy's establishment strikes back

Italy's president blocking the government's choice of finance minister will mean fresh elections – which could easily turn into a referendum on Europe.

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President Mattarella: picking a fight with populists
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Italy has had around 65 governments since World War II. So the collapse of another one seems par for the course. In any case, Italy has hitherto always muddled through and occasionally even prospered despite its dysfunctional politics. But "the present impasse is very different", says The Times. It could "tear the country from its European moorings".

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.