Italian Referendum Result: A Headache for Rome, or for Brussels?

... Chancellor Angela Merkel may today be breathing a sigh of relief — there is no threat to German leadership in Europe. Matteo Renzi has lost one of the most important political fights of his life; this was obvious as soon as the first ten per cent of the referendum votes had been counted. A “second Germany” was not going to be built on the Apennine peninsula, nor was this likely to happen in the foreseeable future, neither in the sense of Italy adopting German socio-economic practices nor in the sense of making Rome an alternative centre of gravity to Berlin for ...