No fiddling with dairy quotas
“Europe deaf to farmers’ outcry,” headlines La Libre Belgique the day after the European Commission refused to lower dairy production quotas. Hard-hit by the ongoing crisis, farmers for months have been calling for quotas to be frozen, or even slashed, to stop prices’ plummeting. The Commission has proposed an aid package, but ruled out changing the tack set by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) “health check” in 2008.
To save the dairy sector we need to consume its produce, declared European agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, before castigating consumers for lapping up “Coca-Cola, which costs between €1 and €1.26 a litre” – a lot more than milk. “An argument […] that betrays a certain perplexity all the same,” opines the Belgian daily.
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. 
Agree to new austerity measures or risk being kicked out of the eurozone: that’s the alternative presented to Athens on the day the euro group is meeting. It’s a situation Greek politicians have failed to avoid, regrets To Vima. 
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.