Libération, 1 January 1970
"Change everything" ! yells French daily Libération at a European left in the midst of an identity crisis. Now that the right, econimcally speaking, has performed a left turn to face down the crisis, social democrats no longer have an original programme nor a social project to speak of, the left wing wing daily surmises. It has let its working class vote run into the arms of Europhobe parties like Ukip in Britain and Italy’s Northern League Italy, while its "bourgeois bohemians" (a term designating a fashion conscious intellgentsia) vote Green. For Libé renewal will come with a confrontation between different left-wing currents – reformists, radicals, republicans and ecologists. Even if this means abandoning the word "Socialist".
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.