Is the "Connie effect" about to take hold in Europe? Denmark's popular Climate Minister, Connie Hedegaard, one of the driving forces behind preparations for the Copenhagen summit, will shortly leave her current position to accept a senior post at the European Commission, reports Politiken. The daily explains that she is should be well up to her new duties in Brussels, where José Manuel Barroso aims to create a portfolio for a Climate Commissioner.
The front page of Politiken shows Connie Hedegaard alongside Lykke Friis, an academic who is renowned for her ability to explain arcane European policies, who replaces her as Climate Minister. The newspaper believes that the choice of such a strong personality for a post that was not supposed to continue beyond the Copenhagen summit is a sign that Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen is planning further government initiatives in the field of climate policy.
The leader of Greece’s leftist alliance SYRIZA is the new bright hope of Greek politics. Steering a course between pragmatism and the rhetoric of class warfare, he has unsettled Berlin, and not just those who back Angela Merkel's austerity policies. 
Europe’s economic woes have forced us to try to understand the secret Olympian world of global finance. But now that we pay more attention to bond yields and stability mechanisms, isn’t it clear that the experts up on their lofty peaks don’t know what’s going on either? 
This year’s Eurovision Song Contest is hosted by Azerbaijan, a country that is far from being a model democracy. An Estonian journalist takes a critical look at the deferential treatment enjoyed by the regime in Baku.