Even split in first round of elections
The second round of the Romanian presidential elections will be a “battle royal”, says România Libera the day after the first round on 20 November. The arbiter of the duel between incumbent Liberal Democrat Traian Basescu (32% of the vote) and Social Democrat challenger Mircea Geoana (31%), between "Romania of the future and that of the [communist] past”, the Bucharest daily opines, will be the liberal Crin Antonescu, who came in third. România Libera fears, however, that "a goodly number of officials, generals and police” who did not relish Basescu’s crackdown on corruption are going to try to tilt the balance in Geoana’s favour in the course of a “final battle” – so they “can then retire in peace”. The daily also notes that over 80% of the electorate voted in favour of abolishing the second house of Parliament in a referendum held the same day.
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.