“Euro crisis: banks under pressure,” headlines French daily Le Figaro. The idea of a Greek default being no longer taboo, “the Old Continent’s banks are under tremendous pressure on stock markets,” the paper says. Three French banks, BNP Paribas, Société Générale and Crédit Agricole are on the front line with holdings of about €37 billion of Italian public debt and holdings of nearly €6 billion of Greek public debt. Although Moody’s rating agency could downgrade their credit rating this week, “the question of whether the European banks holding State bonds from fragile Eurozone members are sufficiently capitalised is widely debated,” Le Figaro notes. As is whether or not the Member States should fly to their rescue.
But as Spanish daily Público says in a headline, three years after the failure of Lehman Brothers, “saving the banks has already cost €2,000 billion” in direct State aid, to which must be added the €3,000 billion (of which €500 billion by the European Central Bank) injected by central banks to add liquidity to the international financing system. “The current relapse proves that the government support given to the banks didn’t reactivate the economy,” the paper says, adding “What’s the use of saving the global banking system to the detriment of the taxpayer’s money?”
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.