“Take the money and run”: El Mundo borrows the title of a celebrated film by Woody Allen to denounce the “subterfuges” of MEPs who show up in parliament on Friday morning to pocket the daily allowance of 304 euros and then immediately leave for a weekend at home. The practice is commonplace for about sixty MEPs (out of 726), the majority of whom “are from France and eastern Europe,” notes the Madrid daily. The scheme has been exposed by the independent British MEP Nikki Sinclaire, who took photos of his colleagues in parliament and at several train stations and airports in Europe and had them published in the British weekly News of the World. “The European Parliament, however, refuses to review its policies,” adds El Mundo. A spokesman for the Assembly asserts that this practice “conforms wholly to the rules” and that “only political parties can encourage their members not to tick off the days when they do no work.”
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.