El País, 18 January 2011
"Berlin says more fiscal discipline is needed to enlarge the rescue fund", leads El País, after the meeting of the Eurogroup and Ecofin, the council of EU Finance Ministers. The German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has asked that a decision on this be taken at the European Council in March to give "new impetus to tougher sanctions against violators of fiscal discipline," writes El País. The Madrid daily highlights Berlin’s “anxiety to control the timing of all the decisions of the EU." Thus, any initiative coming from Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, or from Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the ECB, "receives more or less veiled censure if it has not been blessed already by Berlin or Paris."
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.