“Unemployment in the EU27 remained at its decade-high level of 9.6 percent in March, the same as the previous month,” reports the euobserver.com. The figure, announced in a 30 April report by Eurostat, represents 23 million, the equivalent of the population of a medium sized country like Romania. The report reveals marked differences between member states, the Brussels-based website notes: “The Netherlands and Austria take up one end of the unemployment spectrum on 4.1 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively. At the other end of the scale, Latvia and Spain are on 22.3 percent and 19.1 percent.” The only country that has seen a rise in employment is Germany, with joblessness down 0.1 percent to 7.3 percent. This is due to the government “offering subsidies to companies putting workers on shorter hours rather than laying them off directly,” euobserver.com writes. However, all other EU member states witnessed a fall.
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.