Europe needs to take a chill pill over the euro

IN Italy, the populist left-of-centre Five Star Movement and the populist right-wing Lega may have failed, for now, to form a government. Their highly controversial, non-conformist policy platform had put European pundits on red alert. The EU political class issued stern warnings about the impending doom.

But what's at the root of it all? Is it a strange form of Italian left-right populism? Or is it the overall architecture of the euro project?

Some 25 years ago, early critics of the European project that centred on a common currency were ridiculed, belittled or accused of ill will. Yet, what all these critics had done was to ask hard questions about the economic soundness of such a currency.