Austerity plan not enough
An austerity package presented by Prime Minister José Socrates on 8 March has failed to convince critics of the Portuguese government. The new "stability and growth programme," which aims to cut the public deficit from 8.3% this year to 2.8% in 2013, will be debated in parliament on 25 March before being submitted to the European Commission. However, experts quoted by Público remain sceptical. "The government is playing with fire," remarks economist João César das Neves who warns that "we will be lost" if the international markets do not believe in the plan. Measures in the package, which include the privatisation of public assets, a wage freeze and a longer working life for civil servants "are not sufficient to balance public accounts," adds economist Álvaro Santos Pereira. But they could be sufficient to create major difficulties for the government now that unions are launching a protest movement.
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.