Italy's Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini gestures as he speaks during the Italian talk show as a picture of French President Emmanuel Macron is seen in the background. ANDREAS SOLARO | AFP | Getty Images

Italy was firmly in the spotlight — and on Europe's naughty step — until recent weeks for its budget-busting spending plans but civil unrest in France is now dominating Europe's attention. Riots, looting and vandalism plagued Paris and other cities at the weekend as France witnessed its fourth consecutive weekend of anti-government demonstrations that have made President Macron's government look vulnerable. The unrest, coupled with political uncertainty in Europe – seen in Germany as Angela Merkel winds down her leadership and wider Europe ahead of European parliamentary elections in May 2019 – mean that Italy's controversial 2019 budget should no longer be the main focus of attention in the region. "Italy's risks to the market, and even Europe, seems quite limited in the sense that you have a lot of safeguards in place and we've already seen a lot of risk-off in Italy," Christian Mueller-Glissmann, Managing Director, Portfolio Strategy at Goldman Sachs, told CNBC on Monday.

"Next year, the focus might shift to broader Europe for other reasons," he told CNBC's Squawk Box Europe. "We have European Parliament elections, we have relative instability in Germany, and France these days, and I think that this could start to be a bigger story than Italy," he said.

The bigger story

Protests in France started because of opposition to planned fuel tax increases by the French government as part of environmental policy but have since evolved into wider anti-establishment protests against French President Emmanuel Macron. The president is due to make a statement Monday evening in which he could announce further concessions on economic reforms that protesters say neglect their needs. With more than a whiff of schadenfreude, Italy certainly seems to be enjoying not being the center of Europe's attention. Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini — who has been criticized by Macron in the past, particularly for his right-wing views — said on Saturday that Macron is to blame for the protests. "History will probably show that if (Macron) had focused more on the French and less on Salvini and Italy, he would have a few less problems today," Salvini told Rai 3 TV on Saturday, Reuters reported, as riots erupted in Paris for a fourth consecutive weekend. "Macron reduced taxes for the very well-off and increased them for those less well off," he added, saying the Italian government had no intention of following this example, Reuters said.

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