A “Euro-emergency” is afoot, headlines La Vanguardia the day after a press conference convened by the Governor of the European Central Bank (ECB), Jean-Claude Trichet. Meant to reassure the markets, the conference was, the paper reports, “disappointing”. Faced with the “lack of determination and unanimity” within the ECB about the sizeable debt securities of Spain and Italy – countries that now find themselves in the sights of speculators – markets have reacted negatively, and European stocks have plunged.
According to the Barcelona daily, Trichet did, however, raise “a fundamental problem: the governance of the euro requires a political and institutional system that is more agile and more effective.” La Vanguardia deplores the slow paced response of the 17 Eurozone national parliaments who still have to approve the agreements from the last EU summit, which has left the ECB “facing danger alone.” The result of this “institutional power struggle may have already had serious economic consequences”, writes the newspaper, which argues that “the EU must respond immediately to get this dangerous atmosphere of mistrust under control,” because the euro is “once more at an impasse.”
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.