‘The Swedish presidency intends to officially announce the failure of the EU’s Lisbon Strategy this autumn,’ Dziennik reports, citing a report from Düsseldorf’s Handelsblatt. The project, endorsed 10 years ago, optimistically aimed for the EU to become the world’s most competitive economy by 2010. Interviewed by the Warsaw paper, Ann Mettler, Executive Director of the Lisbon Council Institute in Brussels, said the agenda had failed because member states had abandoned too quickly its main objective, that is, competitiveness. Instead, they focused on stimulating economic growth, which was to guarantee Europe's prosperity. That change in focus was because few EU countries were able to meet the competitiveness objectives: achieving a 70-percent employment rate and spending 3 percent of GDP on innovation and development.
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.