Bad news for future Dutch OAP's
“Working to 67 is inevitable,” headlines De Volkskrant. Indeed, it looks as though the Dutch will have to work two years longer than they do now, as the government proposed back in March 2009. Negotiations between labour and management and a panel of independent experts, convened within the framework of the Social and Economic Council (SER), have completely broken down, reports the Amsterdam daily. Aimed at coming up with an alternative to the government’s retirement plan, the talks dragged on, in vain, for six months. The Volkskrant bemoans that this is a “hard blow to our consensus model” – known in The Netherlands as the “polder model” (the reference being to the lowlands protected by dikes), and the SER as “the most important polder organisation” – and that the latter has now put itself “on the sidelines”. So the ball is now in the court of Christian Democrat social minister Piet Hein Donner, who has to make up a €35 million deficit in the pension coffers from 2011.
In a time of crisis with high unemployment, young Lithuanians are following in the footsteps of their emigrant ancestors. Tens of thousands have left the country in search of a better life, mainly in the British Isles and Scandinavia. The weekly Veidas reports: 
Two camps, two theories, and two visions of France: 18 years after the massacre of 800,000 Tutsis, the precise role played by Paris is still the subject of heated debate, fueled by the findings of successive criminal investigations. 
Agree to new austerity measures or risk being kicked out of the eurozone: that’s the alternative presented to Athens on the day the euro group is meeting. It’s a situation Greek politicians have failed to avoid, regrets To Vima.