Lady Ashton's large diplomatic body
Four months after the appointment of Catherine Ashton as the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, El Periódico announces that Europe's 27 member states reached agreement "on the basic principles of the structure and operation of the European External Action Service (EEAS)" on 26 April. The Catalan daily explains that the EEAS will be represented by some 130 delegations throughout the world, and will have about 5,000 staff and a budget of 30 billion euros. Dziennik Gazeta Prawna regrets that the future service will be under the strict control of "bigger" countries, who will monopolise the main jobs, while Le Soir, which dubs the EEAS an "institutional mutant," worries about the mixed allegiances of staff in the new organisation to be composed of European civil servants and diplomats "temporarily 'on loan' from member states." This will lead to a power struggle between member states eager to place "their" appointees in key jobs, and the European Commission which aims "to establish a strong EU ethos in the service."
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.