A newspaper for the Europe of tomorrow
Six major European dailies, well-known to the readers of Presseurop -- Le Monde, El País, Gazeta Wyborcza, Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Guardian and La Stampa – are launching a joint project called Europa and scheduled for publication on Thursday. In this "State of the Union," as Italy's La Stampa headline dubbed it, the idea is "to reflect on the actual state of the EU, which, like never before, is at the centre of a thousand questions on its present and, most of all, its future".
Answering these questions in their articles and their analysis is the goal of the six papers' journalists and of contributing intellectuals and politicians. The six titles together represent over 10 million readers, points out Spain's El País.
Among the first to be published is British sociologist Anthony Giddens, Greek writer Petros Makaris, who paints a "bitter-sweet portrait of Brussels", and Italian author and semiologist Umberto Eco. The latter argues that "culture, beyond war, constitutes our identity". A culture he calls "shallow" and which "needs to be better rooted, before it is destroyed totally by the crisis".
As for the politicians, there are contributions from former prime ministers, Gordon Brown of Britain and Spain's Felipe González. But the key interview is accorded by "the leader that most represents the real power in Europe," Angela Merkel. The German Chancellor provides her vision of the future of Europe. "Over a long process," she says –
... we will transfer more powers to the [European] Commission, which will then handle what falls within the European remit like a government of Europe. That will require a strong parliament. A kind of second chamber, if you like, will be the council comprising the heads of [national] government. And finally, the supreme court will be the European court of justice. That could be what Europe's political union looks like in the future – some time in the future, as I say, and after a goodly number of interim stages.
Drive Greece out of the euro, and build a federal Europe behind a protective firewall? Italian columnist Barbara Spinelli warns that this idea, which appears to be gaining ground with a number of European leaders, would not only fail to resolve the crisis but would also put an end to Europe’s common culture. 
At 89 years of age, he is a fixture at anti-austerity demonstrations. A member of the Greek communist party for 70 years, he has also been a national icon since the day in 1941 when he climbed the Acropolis at night to tear down the Nazi flag. 
In a meeting that lasted into the small hours of Tuesday, February 21, the Eurogroup finally adopted a second bailout plan for Greece of €130 billion with an additional €107 billion in cancelled debt. But failing a genuine economic development plan, this sum will not be sufficient to put the country back on its feet, warns Greek daily To Ethnos.