Kabul, immediate forced boarding
On 21 October, the first plane to be jointly chartered by British and French authorities for the purpose of deporting refugees whose requests for asylum have been denied landed in Kabul, after a stopover in Paris. The deportation was largely ignored in Great Britain, which, as The Times points out repatriated 3,835 Afghans with or without their agreement in 2008. However, in France, the flight – which was the first refugee charter to Afghanistan since 2005 – prompted an outcry on the opposition benches, among human rights groups, and even in the ranks of the majority. "How can you justify the deportation of three Afghans to a war zone?" asks the Libération editorial. The left-wing daily further avers that France's Immigration Minister Eric Besson and President Nicolas Sarkozy "are intent on sending a clear message: charter flights may now legitimately be used to cope with flow of refugees into Europe."
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: 
The new Eurogroup meeting on February 9 is not enough to banish the spectre of a Greek bankruptcy. While Athens may largely be responsible for the crisis, the EU and its partners are not blameless themselves. La Stampa argues that their confused messages and the absence of any strategy have transformed a resolvable problem into an explosive chaos. 
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.