Fears heightened by falling stock markets earlier this week and pressure from the EU and Germany appear to have borne fruit: the Italian Senate must approve on September 7 the latest draft of the austerity plan intended to slash the public deficit and to take the pressure off the ECB. The parliamentarians should pass the draft later in the week. Redrafted more than once since it was announced, the plan includes proposals for a one-point increase in VAT (up to 21 percent) and a ‘solidarity’ tax on incomes over 300,000 euros a year, writes the Corriere della Sera. "Where is the halving of the numbers of Parliamentarians?" asks columnist Dario Di Vico, who likens the plan to the tapestry woven by Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey. What is needed now, he adds, is that the government “put the final stitch in it".
The plan has already provoked responses from unions: on September 6 nearly a million people, called out by CGIL, the largest union, marched in several Italian cities to protest the announced cuts.
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.