The blackout risk
Is France in for a blackout? As the cold spell sweeps across the land, power consumption is steadily rising – which could cause a shortage, warns Le Monde. The French daily notes that “half of Europe’s electrically-heated housing” is in France, where 7 million households rely on the power grid to keep warm. Should temperatures remain below the seasonal average, the daily continues, we might be headed for an outage, since “France’s all-out nuclear approach (85% of electricity generated) is poorly suited to the winter peaks in demand”. As a matter of fact, the national utility Electricité de France has had to import several thousand megawatts from Germany. On the other hand, the Tageszeitung accuses Angela Merkel of being the “No 1 climate killer”, slamming the German chancellor, a self-styled “passionate environmentalist”, for heating the chancellery with coal and natural gas: although these are cheap energy sources in Germany, that costs taxpayers €71,631 a year and emits 4,715 metric tons of CO2 p.a.
At a time when Athens is still involved in debt restructuring negotiations with its private creditors, Neelie Kroes’ recent allusions to a Greek exit from the euro are a sign that European leaders are intent on preparing the terrain for such an eventuality. 
As Greece pimps its ancient monuments to bring in the tourists, lovers of cultural heritage are up in arms. But the country is only doing openly what the whole of Europe is: looting historic sites to drum up more ready cash. 
Asserting national values is central to the political project of the Hungarian PM. Since the start of the year, fifteen paintings, specially commissioned for an exhibition in the Castle of Buda, have been putting this ambition on show.