"Bulgaria is still shelling out on the new nuclear plant, though it isn’t clear it might ever see the light of day.” – “Well, why is your gas so expensive?” Dnevnik sums up the dialogue between Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borissov and Russian first deputy prime minister Viktor Zubkov at a meeting on 6 July. The government in Sofia is sending conflicting signals on whether it will honour its socialist predecessors’ commitments to the construction of a Russian nuclear plant in Bulgaria that’s turning into a white elephant, and to the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline project. Meanwhile, Gazprom, the Russian gas Goliath, is threatening to exclude Bulgaria from the South Stream gas pipeline project in retaliation. And this despite the fact that Bulgaria was the EU country with the closest ties to Moscow in recent years.
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.