Peter Murtagh in the Irish Times remarks that the European elections fell on the 65th anniversary of the Normandy landings, when “people of decency began to wrest back from fascists a continent they had plunged into barbarity.” The EU, he argues, is “in many ways a living monument to what was achieved” that day.
A Eurosceptic right now exists that considers the EU “a dictatorship.” The cleverest, he argues, “cloak their supposedly commonsense credos in reasonableness.” During a recession, however, such groups show their true colours and “identify foreigners as part of our problem and suggest we should brand them with coloured cards.” No-one has been fooled, however, argues Murtagh, in what, to an Irish readership, is a clear allusion to anti-Lisbon treaty Libertas’ failure to win seats in Ireland.
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.