The eurozone faces dangerous elections in 2013

The eurozone doesn’t like elections much, because they tend to provoke a crisis. So with elections coming up next year in both Italy and Germany, things are going to get very interesting indeed, says Matthew Lynn.

We've learned many things about the eurozone over the three years the debt crisis has been unfolding. Every solution' seems to unravel quickly. There's always another country getting into trouble as soon as one gets fixed. And the final summit' rapidly gets followed by another one.

But we have also learned this; it doesn't like elections much, because they provoke a crisis. We've already seen it in Greece, where electors threw out the parties associated with punishing austerity programmes. Next year will see two major votes. One in Italy, which the markets are already getting nervous about. But more important is the one in Germany.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.