“European leaders want to jump the gun on the Lisbon Treaty,” announces Spiegel Online.

Citing diplomatic sources, the German news weekly’s website reports that the EU’s 27 government leaders will not agree to reduce the number of European commissioners — a change stipulated by the Lisbon Treaty.

As it stands, every EU member state has the right to designate a commissioner, and national leaders want this rule to apply to the next commission to take office following European elections in 2014.

According to Spiegel Online, their decision will be announced at the next European Council meeting on May 22 in Brussels. Continuing with 27 EU commissioners will require a unanimous decision, but no country has announced it will oppose the measure, notes the news website, which explains the logic of the council’s position:

If the number of commissioners was limited to 19, some EU member states would be absent from the Brussels Commission for the entire duration of the legislature.

“Each commissioner costs approximately €1.5m to €2m per year,” remarks Spiegel Online, which argues that in a time of austerity, “it will be hard to justify the financial implications of this decision to taxpayers.”

High risks of money laundering, errors in bank records, missing identity checks and obscure customer records are all rampant in Cyprus’s banking sector, according to a leaked EU report that could trouble the conditions of the country’s €2bn taxpayer-funded bailout package.

At the request of eurozone finance ministers, EU monitoring body Moneyval and US accountancy firm Deloitte investigated the activities of six Cypriot banks and their biggest clients and drew up the report in April.

A leaked version of the report’s summary, published over the weekend by Cypriot website Stockwatch, shows 58 per cent of one bank’s clients pose a “high risk” of money laundering and almost a third of all bank depositors’ records contain errors.

Other findings suggest that file information on 27 per cent of depositors and 11 per cent of borrowers displayed “inaccurate information on the customer and beneficial owner”, that identities of customers were unclear in up to 75 per cent of international business cases, and that proper ID checks on “complex” structures were carried out in only 9 per cent of all cases.

EUObserver questions whether Cypriot banks are effectively monitoring their own clients, since the banks

launched just four internal probes on potential money laundering [...] between 2008 and 2012. They reported zero ‘suspicious transactions’ to Cypriot authorities in 2008 to 2010, one in 2011 and ‘a few’ in 2012. But Deloitte identified 29 of them in the last 12 months alone.

The site says the report “gives the lie to Cypriot diplomats and politicians who have been telling media in recent months the island adheres to international standards” and also suggests a potential problem for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who vowed to clean up Cyprus as German MPs approved the EU bailout package.

EUObserver quotes an unnamed diplomat looking ahead to September’s elections: “If German people saw the report, they might say: ‘I would not give my money to such a country.’”

Approximately 4,500 British tax residents have benefitted from the Liechtenstein Disclosure Facility. Under the terms of the scheme, which was agreed by London and the Principality of Liechtenstein in August 2009, British tax evaders have been given an opportunity to disclose untaxed fortunes in Liechtenstein, where they will be subject to a penalty amounting to 10 percent of their value.

Some 2,940 adjustment procedures have been conducted, with an average net benefit to the British exchequer of “£174,000 [approximately €205,200 euros], which represents an overall figure of £523m [about €616.78m],” explains Liechtensteiner Volksblatt.

The success of the scheme “has exceeded expectations,” enthuses the daily, which adds that “most of the funds revealed were from external capital,” which has brought “fresh money” to Liechtenstein’s banks. The United Kingdom has prolonged the scheme until April 2016.

The leader of the Christian Democratic and Christian Social Union parliamentary group wants to outlaw symbols of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the former communist East Germany, reports Berliner Morgenpost.

Volker Kauder wants to avoid further “provocations”, following a May 9 parade of former soldiers of the National People’s Army (NVA), in which armed men, wearing Stasi and NVA uniforms and carrying flags of the GDR gathered around the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin's Treptow Park.

Kauder’s proposal is supported by liberals in the ruling coalition. The deputy president of the liberal parliamentary group, Martin Lindner, also wants to introduce a law to outlaw symbols of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.

Gigi Becali, an MP for the ruling National Liberal Party and owner of the football club Steaua Bucarest, has been definitively found guilty by the High Court of Appeals and Justice, which, on May 20, sentenced him to three years in prison for his part in a corrupt business deal that took place in 1997.

Becali was charged with unlawful profiteering in the deal, which involved the exchange of 30 hectares of land with the Romanian Ministry of Defence.

For România liberă —

Becali is finally having to pay for the greatest ever swindle of the state. […] In the case, which was led by prosecutors from the National Anticorruption Directorate, two other public figures (the minister of defence of the period, and a former chief of general staff) were also sentenced to two years in prison.

A spokesman for José Manuel Barroso has rejected allegations from two Green MEPs to the effect that the Commission President forced former health commissioner John Dalli to step down from his post without waiting for the results of a corruption investigation by the European Anti-Fraud Office.

The spokesman pointed out that Barroso demanded Dalli’s resignation because he believed that his Maltese colleague’s “position had become politically untenable”.

Dalli was allegedly aware that a close associate, Silvio Zammit, had demanded money from the Swedish tobacco lobby in exchange for favours from the former health commissioner.

The Democratic Party (PD) is preparing a law that would limit public funding to political parties and exclude unconventional organisations like Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement. Grillo reacted angrily to the proposal and called for a boycott of the next election if it is signed into law.

Grillo also called on PD dissidents to support a motion, to be voted Tuesday, that would bar People of Freedom (PDL) leader Silvio Berlusconi from running as a candidate on the grounds that he owns a TV network. If the motion were to pass, it would likely result in the collapse of the PD-PDL coalition government.

According to Corriere della Sera, the coalition government of Enrico Letta could prove even shorter-lived than predicted, and new elections could be called as soon as parties reach a deal on the new electoral law.

A second night of rioting swept across the Stockholm suburb of Husby, which is home to a mainly immigrant population, on May 20. Several cars were burned while masked youths threw stones at police.

The riots have been sparked by the May 13 death of a 69-year-old man, who was killed by police whom he allegedly threatened. But segregation and unemployment have also contributed to these events, argues Dagens Nyheter.

Members of the police force have been accused of using racist language in their dealings with the people of Husby. “They call us ‘negroes’ and ‘monkeys’”, complains Rami Al-Khamisi, a spokesman for Megafonen, a group that works with young people in the Stockholm suburbs.

Beijing has threatened to contest the European Commission's decision to impose taxes on Chinese solar panels and telecommunications equipment before the World Trade Organisation.

Germany, which accounts for more than half of the EU’s exports to China, has voiced its concern over the power struggle and called for an amicable settlement.

“It is high time that Europe gave up its fascination with the size of the Chinese market and demanded, like the United States, a minimum of fair exchange”, argues Le Figaro, which adds —

The interdependence of global economies will add to pressure for an amicable settlement, as desired by Berlin. But for that, it is time for Europe to put its foot down and to set aside any naivety. Given China’s rapid rise to power, soon it will be too late.

Antonio Tajani is European Commissioner for Industry, a sector that has been hit hard by the crisis, and one which several member states are hoping will play a central role in their recovery. On the sidelines of the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, he told us about the EU’s recipe for economic recovery, the crisis affecting the Union’s relationship with its citizens, and his vision for the future of Europe.

Mr Tajani, the crisis is ongoing in Europe and unemployment has reached record levels in several countries. Numerous experts have highlighted the issue of the competitivity of companies, which remains problematic in most EU states, with the notable exception of Germany, as well as the weakness of internal demand. How should these difficulties be addressed?

With policies that enable companies to relaunch production. First and foremost, this will entail a simplification of access to credit and payments that are owed to companies. That is why the Commission is proposing a new directive on late payments, which has already been adopted by 18 member states.

This directive, as well as a flexible interpretation of the Stability and Growth Pact, which will facilitate the reimbursement of debts owed by the public administration and should put a further €180bn in circulation in Europe, that will dynamize the positive feedback loop of production and consumption.

We will also have to give new powers to the European Central Bank (ECB), so that it can play the same role as the American Federal Reserve. Its President, Mario Draghi, is in tune with arguments on this wavelength, and wants an ECB that can govern the common currency in a manner that is in the interest of citizens.

The variation in pay scales in Europe has added to differences in the competitivity of companies in different EU states. Some have argued that it is even undermining competition within the EU. Is Europe planning to intervene to promote greater harmonisation?

Competitivity is not threatened by a variation in pay scales between different EU states: the problem is one of fiscal pressure on companies, which is excessive in some countries. And this is where we can intervene: by obliging national governments to reduce this pressure, and ensuring that companies are paid, and that they have easy access to credit. At the end of the day, this will result in better conditions for all workers.

2012 was a bad year for the European car industry, and 2013 is shaping up to be similar for a majority of players, with the notable exception of the Volkswagen group. What is the EU doing about this?

We have launched a three-point action plan: firstly, we have doubled funding for car industry research and innovation in the next EU budget. Secondly, we are implementing a “non-naive” trade policy for the sector, that is to say one that protects car industry interests but within the framework of trade agreements. Thirdly, we have simplified existing regulations, and new rules and proposals will only be drafted in response to exceptional developments, for example in the field of road safety. The goal is ensure that we do not add to the burden of technical and financial standards weighing on entrepreneurs.

Does it make sense to provide support for the car industry, at a time when more and more cities are hoping to reduce the number of cars in their streets?

What does not make sense is wanting to cut down on car production. It has to be done in an intelligent manner: the doubling of funding for research and innovation is only for "greener" cars, which run on hydrogen and electricity, or feature other less-polluting technologies.

According to forecasts, there will be 2.5bn vehicles in the world in 2050, as opposed to 1.7bn today. There is therefore room for exports and internationalisation. For example, the good results of Fiat plants in Brazil have enabled the brand to keep its operations going in Italy.

When are these proposals going to be examined by the European Council?

The council meeting on competitiveness is planned for the end of June. Then there is a meeting on industry slated for the beginning of the year, which will be more focused on manufacturing. Then there will be a third one that is more oriented towards defence, which should take place before the end of this year. For years, industry has been set aside by political leaders obsessed with finance, now Europe is making industry a central priority for the economy. Manufacturing is supposed to account 20 per cent of the EU’s economic activity by 2020. As it stands, the average for EU states is 16 per cent.

The de-industrialisation that began in Europe in the 1980s has been identified as one of the causes of the economic crisis. Are we aiming to reverse this trend?

De-industrialisation was a big mistake. We need a more modern and a more competitive industry. For that, we will need a third industrial revolution: after coal and oil, the time has come for a revolution based on green energy, energy saving, and key-enabling technologies, specifically bio- and nano-technologies, that will enable our industry to attain a global level of excellence.

Can you tell us about collaboration on this initiative with your colleagues in the Commission? For example with the commissioners for the environment and research.

The Commissioner for the Environment, Ms Hedegaard, and I are very much on the same wavelength. The reduction of CO2 emissions is a positive goal, as long as it not allowed to become counterproductive. I believe the 2020 target of a 20 per cent reduction [in emissions from their level in 1990] is a valid one, but I do not believe that this objective should be increased as some people have suggested. A higher target would result in higher costs for European companies, which would then consider terminating their operations in Europe. Not only would this result in job losses, but it would also amount to a setback in the fight against global warming: because those companies would simply transfer polluting activities to other countries with more flexible legislation on CO2 emissions.

The latest Eurobarometer survey has highlighted a worrying decline in EU citizens’ confidence in European institutions. What can be done to combat this disaffection?

The disaffection has been caused by the economic crisis, in which Europe has been perceived as a political force that is demanding sacrifices. We have to reverse this trend and also take stock of the election results in several European countries, where Euroscepticism and a mistrust of the euro have now emerged. To this end, policy must be changed so that it is more focused on growth and the development of the real economy. As Commission President José Manuel Barroso has recently pointed out, we should stop insisting on sacrifices and do more for industry, companies and the internal market. Austerity can only be useful if it is accompanied by measures to provide support for growth.

On this point, do you believe that the communication from the Commission has been satisfactory?

More could be done, especially with regard to explaining what we do. As for myself, I do a lot of traveling because I believe that is important to communicate on our work. For example, this year we have launched an initiative to organise encounters between the EU and its citizens, with meetings in public squares and town halls etc.

Will you be a candidate in next year’s European elections?

I do not think so, but I am counting on completing my mandate [which ends in October 2014].

What do you think of the proposal launched by several European politicians and intellectuals, and taken up by the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, that parliamentary groups should put their candidate for the European Commission presidency at the head of their electoral list?

I am in favour of the principle that the European Commission president should be elected by Europe’s citizens. Barroso’s reappointment in the wake of the conservative European People’s Party victory [PPE] in 2009 European elections was a step in this direction, which responded to some extent to the demand for more democracy in the management of European institutions.

Who will be the PPE candidate?

The party has yet to discuss the question of a candidate. That will be raised next year.

The European Union has entered a critical period in which it is faced with conflicting demands as well as a resurgence of Euroscepticism and isolationism in several member states. How do you view the future of the EU?

I think we should continue to forge ahead. Piecemeal measures will not serve any purpose. We should set our sights on a United States of Europe. If we do not, we will remain stuck in the middle of the ford where we run the risk of being swept away by the current. It is transition that will take time: it took the Americans a century to achieve, and they had to go through a civil war, even though they faced perhaps fewer obstacles than we do. These are difficult times for Europe, but 20 years ago, who would have thought that we would have a single currency? We have to be determined and confident, because we cannot expect to have any global impact acting alone. It is a goal that will not be achieved overnight, but I hope that in my lifetime we will see a United States of Europe.

For the Moldovans, the Europe Day celebrations began on May 18 and will continue until May 26. They did not coincide with the May 9 ceremonies elsewhere in Europe, because on that date, the Moldovan government preferred to commemorate WWII Victory Day in the presence of Russian Deputy Premier, Dmitri Rogozine. In the Jurnal de Chişinău, Petru Bogatu deplores what he terms “an abundant flow of misery in the Grand National Assembly Square.” The noted op-ed writer continues —

The orgies indulged in by the Russians on the occasion of ‘Victory Day’ are proof that, 22 years after our declaration of independence, we have plumbed new depths in shiftless politics. With regard to European standards, the behaviour of our leaders can best be described as ‘anything goes’.

The Europe Day celebrations were opened by the European Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy, Štefan Füle, who called on Moldovan authorities to do “all they could for the democratisation of the Republic.” However, Jurnal de Chişinău insists that Russia ”has reconquered Moldova without tanks or artillery.” The newspaper adds that “President Putin’s emissary has indicated the next road, leads east rather than west,” and voices its hope that the new Leancă government, confirmed on May 15, will extricate the country from this ambiguity.

France is to buy two American Reaper surveillance drones to be deployed in the war in Mali before the end of this year, announces Libération.

The daily, which points out that France is planning to acquire 12 surveillance drones over the next few years, explains that —

Above and beyond the acquisition of the two Reapers, more of these aircraft will have to be bought in the medium term. [...] France especially wants its assembly lines to produce the drone of the future, a kind of armed Rafale without a pilot, between now and 2035. “In a collaborative programme with the British, we have both invested €20m,” says the Ministry of Defence. Doubtless this one of the final opportunities to avoid definitive dependence on the American ally.

Libération notes that French Defence Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drien, has spoken of “possible European collaboration” and is hoping to “bring the British and the Germans, ‘who have similar needs’, into the loop.” However, “this process appears to be deadlocked,” in the wake of a recent move by Le Drien’s German counterpart, Thomas de Maizière.

He cancelled the purchase of four Euro Hawk drones, built by EADS and American company Northrop Grumman. His decision was announced in the wake of revelations in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that “the Ministry of Defence had continued with the EuroHawk programme, whose costs ran to several billion euros, even though it was fully aware that it would not be authorised to use the aircraft in German and European airspace,” because of its lack of an anti-collision system.

“The embarrassing truth does not only concern the current Minister of Defence,” remarks *FAZ. But also —

… his predecessors Guttenberg (CSU), Jung (CDU) and Struck (SPD). All of whom failed to pose the crucial question: How can a drone be authorised to fly in civil airspace, if it is not equipped with reliable anti-collision system?

Czech President Miloš Zeman has provoked a storm of criticism from academics, politicians and journalists by refusing a request from Charles University in Prague to confer the title of professor on literary historian Martin C. Putna.

The head of state has said that he has doubts about promoting the popular author of Homosexuality and Catholicism, because of his liberal opinions and participation in the Prague Pride gay parade.

“The president’s role in university appointments is a purely ceremonial one. The ritual signing of decrees [...] is a legacy of the Austro-Hungarian empire,” points out Lidové noviny, which believes that Zeman has exceeded his mandate.

A group of UK business leaders have signed a letter to The Independent accusing Eurosceptic politicians of putting “politics before economics” in calling for Britain to withdraw from the EU.

The signatories, including airline and music tycoon Richard Branson, demand Prime Minister David Cameron “strengthen and deepen” involvement in the European single market.

“The letter, which is signed by senior figures including the current and next presidents of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) as well as the chairmen of BT, Deloitte, Lloyds and Centrica, is the first co-ordinated response from the business community to increasing anti-European political rhetoric,” writes the daily.

The Portuguese are not happy with the intervention of the troika in Portugal, according to a survey carried out by Eurosondagem for the European Institute, part of the Law Faculty at Lisbon University, and which will be released on May 20.

Almost half of Portuguese people feel the agreement between the government and the troika should not have been signed, compared to only 12 per cent who back the deal. A total of 82.5 per cent want to renegotiate or terminate the troika agreement.

President Aníbal Cavaco Silva will receive the members of the Council of State – the political body that advises the president – on May 20, for talks about the country’s likely condition once the troika has left Portugal, and for preparations ahead of the European Council meeting due to take place in June.

The movement Que se lixe a troika (Fuck the troika) called a protest today in front of the Presidential palace, to call for Cavaco Silva to "finally assume his position, respect the constitution and dismiss the government, which is ravaging Portuguese life."

Mayor of Zagreb Milan Bandić has emerged as the major winner in the first round of municipal elections, which took place in Croatia on May 19, reports Večernji list.

Support for the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which leads the ruling coalition, declined throughout the country, while the nationalist Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) succeeded in gaining ground.

With 47.3 per cent of first round votes, the populist and former SDP MP, Bandić, is in a good position to obtain a fifth mandate in Zagreb City Hall.

In an interview with Bild am Sonntag, Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann has “poured cold water on the European Central Bank’s timid economic stimulus policy,” notes La Vanguardia.

Weidmann argues that the ECB and France “are slacking in the fight against the causes of the crisis.” He is particularly critical of the reduction in interest rates decided by the ECB and the decision to allow France more time to meet its deficit targets.

The daily reports that, for his part, Mariano Rajoy has decided “to go on the offensive.” The Spanish Prime Minister is preparing for a June 5 meeting in Brussels in which he is hoping to convince the European Commission of the validity of his reforms.

Labour Minister Enrico Giovannini announced a €12bn plan – half coming from EU funds – to create 100,000 jobs for people aged under 24 people, as part of a plan to cut youth unemployment by 8 per cent.

The measures, which should be ready by June, will not include the reductions in labour costs demanded by analysts and employers, but focus instead on easing short-term contract regulations and partially undoing reforms introduced by Mario Monti’s government.

With figures showing one in five young Italians is unemployed, the government is trying to follow initiatives taken elsewhere in Europe, but the issue could prove a divisive and dangerous one for the fragile coalition, warns La Repubblica.

Plans to legalise gay marriage must overcome a new hurdle with some MPs seeking to derail the bill by adding an amendment to the existing law allowing gay couples the right to form civil partnerships, to be extended to also include heterosexual couples.

The Marriage Bill, which was approved by MPs when it was first debated in February, will return to the House of Commons for its report stage today after being debated by the UK parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords.

Should the amendment extending civil partnership rights to heterosexual couples be passed, the government claims this would delay the law’s introduction by two years and cost an extra £4bn (€4.7bn).

Some Europeans have their gaze fixed on Malmö at the moment, where the Eurovision Song Contest is being hosted. Though, it might be worth paying attention to what is going on in London, Paris and Berlin, where different visions of Europe, which we ought to be debating, are developing.

On May 14, the British Conservative Party tabled a bill calling for a referendum, to be held no later than December 31, 2017, on the question: “Do you think the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Union?” The terms of the debate were set out by Prime Minister David Cameron in January, when he called for a “new deal” between his country and a more flexible EU. In doing so, he unwittingly laid himself open to pressure from the Eurosceptics in his party and from the UK Independence Party, while writing the referendum into law makes it very difficult for him to back out of it. But he also forced his partners to face up to their responsibilities.

On the continent, François Hollande has finally delivered a broad sketch of his thoughts on the union. On May 16, he gave the EU two years to define the content of a political union. “It is a matter of urgency for Europe,” the French president declared. That these two years will bring us to the end of David Cameron’s government is perhaps no accident.

The French president also proposed an economic government for the Eurozone, with a president and monthly meetings, as well as “a new stage of integration with a fiscal capacity given to the Eurozone and the possibility, gradually, of raising loans.”

It remains to be seen what Germany will propose. And that will have to wait until September 23 and the outcome of the German elections. Angela Merkel seems securely entrenched in the Chancellery, but the country hasn’t heard the last from the Red-Green alliance.

This perhaps explains why the head of the Social Democrats, Peer Steinbrück, also came out with his own vision of Europe on May 14. The programme envisages a stronger European Parliament, which would participate in European Council meetings, and the transformation of the Commission into a government that eventually will be elected and accountable to Parliament.

And Angela Merkel? One year ago the Chancellory expressed its desire to see the Commission play the role of a government and the council of heads of state or government play the second chamber of parliament with reinforced powers. More recently, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble repeated that the banking union, considered a crucial element for the stabilisation of the Eurozone, would not go ahead without a new European treaty. He is therefore expected to know what Merkel is proposing these days.

François Hollande's speech was received cautiously in Berlin, where a gesture from Paris, whose voice has often been hard to hear over the past year, was expected. But no Franco-German initiative is anticipated before the end of the year, when we will know if Hollande and Merkel are condemned to work together for a few years more, or if a Franco-German axis with the Social Democrats may be possible.

The hardest part will come afterwards, when this potential vision will have to confront the vision of the British – and when it will have to confront the reality of European opinion as well. From this point of view, this is another Franco-German initiative that can – and must – promote a concrete vision of the future of Europe: that one that must be put forward by the next European summit, to tackle youth unemployment. We'll certainly be debating that.

“At last a French proposition for Europe!” announces Le Monde, which welcomes the new European attitude outlined by the French President during his May 16 statement —

François Hollande’s address to Europeans and Germany at his press conference, finally put an end to the dodging and obstruction of European policy that have marked his tenure since his election. […] In affirming that France should be the "link" between northern and southern Europe, the head of state has given up on the idea of rallying Latin countries to oppose a Germanic Europe.

The daily also argues that in calling for united “economic government” in the Eurozone —

François Hollande is taking Angela Merkel, who proposed a political union a year ago, at her word. At the time, he was critical of an empty proposition. Today he has given it "substance". Taking Germany at its word is the right strategy. At last, France is once again bringing a proposition to the European table. However, it will only be credible if Mr Hollande sets his French house in order.

In Germany, where François Hollande’s remarks have been received with much less enthusiasm, Die Welt points out that the “so-called offensive is mainly composed of measures that were already presented by his predecessor,” whether they be —

… the European economic government that was called for by Sarkozy before the European Parliament in Strasbourg in 2008, or the idea of issuing bonds, which for tactical reasons Hollande is no longer calling Eurobonds, in the hope that the stubborn Germans will one day accept them.

With regard to his address to Germany, Die Welt remarks that Hollande’s attitude consists of “moaning about German austerity not only as a statement of his ideological position, but also as a tactical measure.” For the newspaper —

… in presenting himself as someone who is willing to do battle with the spectre of a Merkel style austerity diktat, he is trying to obtain room for manoeuvre that, in a best case scenario, will enable him to push through unpopular reforms. It follows that Angela Merkel will have to continue to allow him use her as a European punching-ball for some time to come.

Will EU plans to impose import duties have their intended impact? According to NRC Handelsblad, “installing Chinese solar panels is a lucrative business in Europe.” In the Netherlands, the solar energy sector has been marked “by spectacular growth,” in spite of the economic crisis. The newspaper explains that —

… vast numbers of entrepreneurs and companies in the electrical installation business, who were hard hit by the crisis in the construction industry, have eagerly moved into the solar panel installation. As it stands, they are able to get by thanks to Chinese equipment. They really do not need a European tax that will make solar panels more expensive [...] AFASE[the organisation which defends the interests of European solar installers] is worried that the taxes could result in 242,000 job losses across Europe — a figure that is vehemently contested by the supporters of import duties, like German panel manufacturer SolarWorld.

NRC Handelsblad points out that the European Commission will decide on the issue of import duties at the end of May. If it rules in favour of the measure, duties will be imposed from the beginning of June, although they will not definitively established until December. They could also be applied retrospectively to transactions dating back to March 6, 2013.

The Bundestag committee of inquiry into the National Socialist Underground (NSU) has highlighted what it describes as a “total failure” of German security services.

Tagesspiegel explains that in its final report, due to be presented to the Bundestag in August but released on May 16, the committee deplores “a police and secret service investigation marked by blind prejudice,” and “a massive underestimation of the danger of right-wing extremism by regional and federal authorities which failed to exchange sufficient information.”

Numerous experts, including police trainers, have called for centralised coordination of initiatives to combat right-wing extremists, as well as counselling programmes for those who have left extreme right circles.

"We are one" announces the slogan of the Eurovision Song Contest, which is currently taking place in Malmö.

However, “at a time when the old industrial city has become an international melting pot that is full of optimism, a growing number of Jewish families are leaving, notes Dagens Nyheter. Anti-semitism is now a defining trait of Malmö, and harassment is common to the point where many Jews no longer see any future in the city.”

Malmö had a 2,000-strong Jewish community in the 1970s. However, only 500 remain there today, explains the newspaper. “The majority have moved to Stockholm or abroad.”

Miguel Blesa, the former chairman of Caja Madrid, the main savings bank in Spain’s largest nationalised banking operation, Bankia group, was taken into provisional custody on May 16 in Madrid.

Blesa is charged with “dishonest management, falsifying official documents, and misappropriation and abuse of corporate assets” in connection with Caja Madrid’s purchase of the City National Bank of Florida in 2008. According to El Periódico, the deal resulted in €500m of losses for Caja Madrid.

The judge took the view that the former banker represented a “flight risk” and ordered him to post bail of €2.5m if he wants to be released from custody.

French President François Hollande confirmed at a press conference on May 16, that the course set for the second year of his mandate would give priority to economic recovery and employment. For La Tribune, “François Hollande is more social-democratic than ever.”

"François Hollande has made European policy ‘the number one objective‘ for his year II,” notes the business news website, which explains that “this policy will be based on four pillars: a new European governmental authority, a plan to help young people enter the workforce, a European energy community and a step towards budgetary integration.” All of this amounts to —

… a clear affirmation that Germany, in spite of its economic power, does not control the leadership of Europe. In other words, without France, there will be no progress on European integration. Obviously, François Hollande wants to be the man who relaunches Europe...

As data showing that the number of unemployed people in the European Union has reached 26 million, the Italian weekly dedicates its special 1,000th issue to highlight European press coverage of the issue of the “jobless generation”.

“In many countries there are good ideas on how to tackle the problem, but often there is a lack of political will and funding,” argues Internazionale.

In a column from El Pais, José Ignacio Torreblanca warns of the possible impact of the unemployed’s frustration and perceived under-representation on the 2014 European elections.

If all the jobless voted together, their party would get 44-46 seats in the parliament. A political force of great visibility.

Conservative Party officials have begun contingency planning in case Nick Clegg, the leader of coalition partner, the Liberal Democrats, is unable to stop his party from withdrawing from the government ahead of the end of its term in 2015.

One scenario would see Prime Minister David Cameron leading a minority government but with some limited support from the Lib Dems, explains The Times.

The news comes at the end of a tough week for the coalition, with the mostly pro-European Liberal Democrats at odds with a vocal anti-European element within the Conservatives, as the matter of Britain’s European membership dominated the week’s headlines.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Social Democrat candidate for the chancellor’s office Peer Steinbrück crossed swords in Berlin at a forum on Europe on May 16 over the issue of possible sanctions against Hungary, which has been accused of violating the principles of EU law.

Steinbrück, reports Népszava, raised the question of the exclusion of Hungary from the EU and asked Merkel to exert more pressure on Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, both personally and within the framework of the European People’s Party, of which they are both members.

The chancellor voiced her agreement with the European Commission on the need to modify the contested Hungarian legislation and remarked that she preferred persuasion to threats. She also pointed out that she is demanding “changes to laws or constitutional amendments, if they do not comply with EU treaties.”

With an average growth of -0.2 per cent in the first quarter (against -0.1 per cent in the EU as a whole) and hardly better prospects for the whole rest of the year (-0.7 per cent), according to Eurostat, the dreaded "double dip" has become a reality. The press attributes the result largely to the austerity policies.

“Eurozone sets bleak record of longest term in recession,” headlines the Financial Times. The economic daily notes that “this latest dismal record came after unemployment hit 12.1 per cent in the bloc, its highest level,” and that this data “is likely to add to pressure on the European Central Bank to take further action after cutting interest rates this month, and to revise down its economic forecast predicting a recovery later in the year.”

For the Financial Times, the new data, which showed France had fallen back into recession, put further pressure on French President François Hollande to implement economic structural reforms —

In Paris, Les Echos expects that the recession, now official, will "force France to reform". On the same wavelength as the FT, Jacques Attali, an economist and former adviser to François Mitterrand, calls on François Hollande to push through "shock reforms" –

For România liberă, the recession in the Eurozone has taken Europe “into the red” in 2013. The poor performance of the European economy, the Bucharest daily notes is raising worried eyebrows even across the Atlantic. There –

"Eurozone mired in recession," headlines El Correo – "the longest in its short history,” adds the daily, continuing –

The Netherlands, “which are going through the worst economic period since the end of the War", have not dodged the downward trend either. Here, however, "consumers are escaping a severe recession," headlines NRC Handelsblad. With a fall of 0.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2013 compared to the same period in 2012, the daily explains, the recession that started in the third quarter of last year is still here. The daily’s analysis is based on the figures published by the Central Office for Statistics on May 14. While those figures may not be that dramatic, stresses NRC, thanks to a few "bright spots" –

The ups and downs of the Eurozone have also had repercussions on the countries outside the zone. In the Czech Republic, for example, the crown has suffered a backlash, losing 6 per cent against the euro since September 2012 notes Hospodářské noviny in Prague. For the economic daily –

“Europe’s suffocating,” headlines Gazeta Wyborcza, which pins the blame squarely on the policy of austerity: “Belt-tightening is driving us into recession,” warns the daily, as Poland’s statistics office announced that the country’s economy grew only by 0.4 per cent year-to-year in the first quarter of 2013 – the worst result in the last four years, and following six successive quarters of recession in the Eurozone.

GW quotes ING Chief Economist Mark Cliffe, who believes that “if the current strategy of belt-tightening is continued, we’ll see more countries going bankrupt.” The daily notes that the economic situation is particularly bad in the countries that have introduced the strictest austerity measures, such as Spain, Italy, Portugal, Cyprus, and Greece.

“The situation of the Roma [in Europe] amounts to the most serious case of ethnic discrimination and exclusion,” claims George Soros, in an interview with Romanian weekly Dilema Veche. The American billionaire, who has created a number of support organisations for Romania’s Roma, believes that the community —

… which was already the victim of human rights violations and social exclusion, is one of the worst affected by the economic crisis and the poverty it has engendered. This has been compounded by the growing hostility to the Roma among the majority of the population, which also has to contend with economic difficulties. Worse still, the situation is being exploited by populist politicians.

For Soros, the Roma's situation has been aggravated by the EU's solutions to the crisis. The impact of these solutions has been —

… to transform the EU into something that is radically different to what it should be: a voluntary association among equals. In contrast, today’s Union amounts to a forced relationship between creditors and debtors, in which the creditors dictate the terms. [...] We should go back to what the EU was in the beginning, and a euro that is an appropriate tool for this purpose.

More than €3bn in reconstruction aid for the 2013-2014 period was pledged to part of the Sahel region at a Mali Donors' Conference held in Brussels on May 15, reports Germany daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. This is "significantly more than the €2bn initially expected," the daily adds.

Principal donors include Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Denmark, the United States, the World Bank and the Islamic Development Bank.

The money will be used to reconstruct the economic and social framework damaged during the war currently underway against Islamic militias in Northern Mali, providing funds to the agriculture and infrastructure sectors, FAZ says.

Another German daily, Süddeutsche Zeitung, however, notes that what Mali needs, first and foremost, is a government formed after democratic elections, currently scheduled for July, and that in Brussels –

very few people have illusions that the Malian state is capable of pulling itself up by its bootstraps any time soon. It will be many years before its fragmented and poorly-qualified army will be able to replace the [United Nations'] Blue Helmets or the French special forces.

“The UK provides the best legal environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) people in the EU while Bulgaria offers the least protection for sexual minorities,” proclaims the EUobserver reporting news of a new investigation into treatment of sexual minorities throughout Europe.

The Rainbow Europe report, published on May 16, gives the UK a score of 77 per cent in terms of providing the best legal protection for LGBTI people, including legislation on “non-discrimination, gender recognition and hate speech.”

Belgium scores second highest with 67 per cent, followed by Sweden, Spain and Portugal, each receiving 65 per cent, and France with 64 per cent. Bulgaria scored only 18 per cent for having “no laws banning hate speech and violence against LGBTI people, no laws on gender-change and only four of the 13 listed laws on equality and anti-discrimination.” Summing up the findings, the website reports –

There is no absolute geographical divide but, as a rule of thumb, the map indicates that the further east in Europe, the more legally precarious the situation is for sexual minorities. [...] In wider Europe, the scoreboard suggests that Russia (7 per cent) is no place for sexual minorities, scoring a perfect zero when it comes to anti-discrimination, freedom of assembly, anti-hate speech and asylum laws.

In a pun headline — “mit links” means “with the left” and also “with ease” — Die Tageszeitung announces its support for a petition entitled “Another Europe is possible”, which was launched on May 15 by social-democratic MPs, representatives of the Left, the Greens, and several trade unions, as well as intellectuals and scientists from Austria, Germany, Italy and France.

For the left-wing daily —

This is the first time that several European left-wing parties have come together to launch a supranational protest against European policy, and in particular the policy of the [German] chancellor, Angela Merkel.

The protest focuses on the introduction of a “Convergence and Competitiveness Instrument” that will force Eurozone countries to push through structural reforms, which are to be approved by the European Council in June. The newspaper explains that for the signatories of the petition —

… the ‘instrument’ will simply pave the way for wage dumping, privatisations and cuts to the welfare state.

The European Parliament will propose that deposits over €100,000, mainly held by companies, get to enjoy greater protection under the new bank resolution mechanism to be adopted by the European Union.

Jornal de Negócios says that the idea is that depositors will "only to be forced to take part in a rescue as a last resort, because they have more protection compared to bondholders."

The proposal will be presented at the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs next Monday, Negócios reveals, quoting a source in the European Parliament.

Negotiations will then take place within the European Council, where there is currently only a consensus about guaranteeing deposits of up to €100,000.

As part of the public sector reform package presented by the Victor Ponta government, 14,000 civil servants (including 4,000 postal workers and 2,500 energy company employees) will be laid off between now and 2018.

The redundancy plan is one of the measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund in exchange for financial aid, points out România Liberă, which adds that this will “herald the end of the government’s honeymoon with the Romanian people.”

The Dutch doctors’ organisation (KNMG) is to meet Health Minister Edith Schippers on May 16 to discuss the possibility of limiting the scope of the law on euthanasia, which came into force in 2002.

A large proportion of doctors believe that euthanasia should not be used in cases where patients suffering from serious dementia are no longer able to communicate, even if they have previously signed a request for euthanasia. Instead they want the practice restricted to cases where patients can confirm — verbally or otherwise — they want to put an end to their lives.

However, the medical profession remains divided on the issue, with some doctors still in favour of the full application of the law. As a GP cited by Volkskrant explains: “In respecting his or her will, we pay homage to a patient who was once alive, and not to a human being who no longer knows if he or she exists.”

“Spain is under the European Union’s magnifying glass” states the Catalan daily, as the Spanish government tries to avoid being forced to take part in a new European Commission regulation system, as it struggles to implement economic reforms.

The “macroeconomic imbalances procedure” is designed to deal with the lagging competitiveness and overstretched banking systems that fuelled the debt crisis.

The procedure for Spain would include a host of new reforms that will be monitored periodically by inspection visits by EC experts. A decision on whether Spain will have to comply with the new procedure regulations will be announced on May 29.

German officials have criticised the policy of austerity and tax increases – the two economic tools favoured by the troika of international leaders – accusing the European Commission of incompetence and stiffness, reports the daily.

"Berlin considers tax increases to be a mistake, which penalises disadvantaged populations and kills economic growth," writes Público, without identifying its sources.

"Berlin’s irritation" is particularly aimed at the European Commission and its President José Manuel Barroso, which the newspaper says paradoxical, "as many of the austerity conditions applied to countries within the rescue programme are implicitly presented in Brussels as result of German demands."

According to the Finnish Finance Minister Jutta Urpilainen, “it was the Greeks who wanted to keep it secret”. However, the Finnish Supreme Administrative Court decided otherwise, and on May 14, the Government was forced to publish the terms of the contract it signed with Greece in 2012.

Under the agreement Athens pledged to provide financial collateral in exchange for a loan which formed part of the international bailout for the country.

The documents reveal that Finland and the Greece set up three bank accounts into which the money and financial securities used as collateral have since been deposited.

The matter had been referred to the court by the True Finns party and several media outlets, including Helsingin Sanomat. The daily is pleased with this “important and expected” decision —

It will strengthen the principle of the broadest possible implementation of transparency and publicity by government. The public has a right to be informed of all relevant official documents. [...] Helping the weak countries of the eurozone is a naturally difficult and controversial issue in Finland. Confidential documents will only serve to undermine confidence in decisions politicians have taken in the eurocrisis.

In the course of the eurozone crisis, Finland has stood out from among the eurozone states by demanding collateral from countries in difficulty as a condition for financial aid. The deal with Greece served as model for another deal concluded with Spain in July 2012.

"Cultural exception: France rallies 13 EU countries," announces French financial daily La Tribune, which reports that French Culture Minister Aurélie Filippetti has managed to convince 13 of her fellow ministers in other EU states to sign a letter, sent to the European Commission and to the EU's Irish Presidency calling for the film and audiovisual sectors to be excluded from talks on a free-trade agreement with the United States.

The letter was signed by representatives of Germany, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Spain, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. La Tribune continues —

… the minister has pointed out that "the letter from fourteen European States, representing a vast majority of the population of the EU" – with the notable exception of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands – shows the will to retain this "cultural exception", which consists, in the face of "the power of the American audiovisual industry," of excluding all audiovisual services [...] from any commitments to free-trade regulations.

The daily notes that the free-trade agreement with the United States is on the agenda for an up-coming meeting of EU culture ministers to be held on May 17.

"Fight against tax fraud: Europe stalls," headlines Belgian daily Le Soir. In its May 15 edition, the newspaper reports that the Brussels meeting of the European Union Finance Ministers council (ECOFIN) failed to reinforce regulations to fight tax fraud, as requested by European authorities, and in particular the Commission.

The goal of the meeting, which was held in preparation for a summit on this issue scheduled for next week, was to extend the current tax agreement on savings to other sources of revenue such as investment portfolios, and to discuss the automatic exchange of data. But ECOFIN stumbled over opposition from Austria and Luxembourg, both of which are hoping to delay the lifting of banking secrecy laws. Le Soir further reports that —

During a joint press conference, the two countries explained that they could not accept the automatic exchange of data if other countries located outside of the European Union did not also play the game as well. Their target is, obviously, Switzerland.

Austria and Luxembourg did however agree to mandate the Commission to negotiate with Switzerland, Andorra, Monaco, Saint Marin and Liechtenstein — a move that has been awaited in Brussels for several years.

For German weekly Stern, the EU has "taken a step forward in its fight against undeclared revenues and tax evasion". The magazine recalls the extent of "the complexity of the situation in which EU ministers found themselves" until now —

… on the one hand they spent years lambasting international tax havens and threatening to drain their resources. At the same time, within their own ranks, Austria and Luxembourg acted hardly any better than these much maligned countries by categorically refusing to share data on revenues generated by capital belonging to people suspected of tax evasion. Now an exit strategy seems possible.

Considered one of the most talented economists of the moment, Tomáš Sedláček believes that economics should be humanised. His international non-fiction bestseller, Economics of Good and Evil, has recently been published in France. Presseurop met him for an interview.

In Economics of Good and Evil, you argue that the boundaries of economics, which define it as an exact science based on mathematical formulae, should be extended to take into account philosophy, religion and the arts. In what way is this concept new and what does the title refer to?

We have a tendency to separate technical thinking from issues of the soul. Economics takes pride in being as difficult as possible, and I try to show that if you separate the body from the soul, both of them lose their sense. Classic questions we economists ask ourselves are: does the economy work? Is the economy efficient? But we should be asking what is the purpose of the economy.

And so what is it then?

The idea is to connect economics with other disciplines. The Bible loses its sense if you read it only spiritually. Economics loses its sense if you look at it only technically. This is what I am trying to do in my book: talk about the soul of economics and make it visible.

If we want the economy to be fair, then the economy should look different. If we only want the economy to give us wealth, then how? If we leave all this to the invisible hand of the market, the markets will lead us. I call it an unorchestrated orchestra. If you can not orchestrate it, it will orchestrate you.

So do we have to reintroduce ethics into the economy?

There has been a lot of talk about the fact that we need to put ethics and humanity into economics. I agree with that, but economics has ethics of its own: you should be efficient, you should be rational, you should not be emotional; it's alright to be selfish and it’s okay for nations to regard their interests. Every system has its own ethics.

I have just read a story about Sodom and Gomorrah. The ethical theme there, was that you must not help anybody. It tells a story about two girls who give bread to a hungry beggar. When other people find out they had acted against the ethics of Sodom and Gomorrah, one is burnt alive and the other hung from the city walls where she is covered in honey to be eaten alive by bees. Nazism had an ethics of its own, communism had an ethics of its own and economics has an ethics on its own. So if we are not happy about the ethics of our time, we should change them.

Is it like some religion that should impose a balance between materiality and spirituality in economics?

Economics on its own became a sort of religion. It tells us what to do, how to think, who we are, how to find meaning in our lives, how to relate to one another, on which principles the society glues together. In a way, it already has religious properties. Take away the mathematics from the economics, and you are left with pure morality.

In Economics of Good and Evil, you claim we have become obsessed by the idea of economic growth. Are you against progress?

I am not against growth or progress. The problem is that we have fetishised it. I am using examples from high and low culture to show that if you fetishise something, it will destroy you. It can be ethics, it can be economics, it can be religion, it can be even your darling. If you fetishise your love, it can drive you nuts. That is what I have called subject-object reversal. You create something that is supposed to listen to you and serve you, then something happens to reverse the subject-object relationship, and you end up listening to it and serving it.

In literature, I found many examples from Golem to Aladdin's Lamp and The Lord of the Ring. At the beginning, and I still believe it, the system – let's call it market democracy – was a fertile ground for growth. In time, it has reversed and it became a condicio sine qua non of market democracy. We should be grateful when growth happens, but if it doesn't, we should be able to survive. The crisis comes only because we think that we will explode as a civilisation without growth. Growth doesn't happen all the time: some years we invent many things, other years we don't invent anything. Some years we have strong GDP growth, some years we have zero or negative GDP growth.

Is there anything positive in today’s crisis?

[Carl] Jung said that nothing can change outside of crisis, least of all human nature. This is not a European crisis, but a crisis of the western world. America, Japan and Europe each try to cope with it their own way. The most important thing is to talk about it. Even people in small villages somewhere up in the mountains talk about Europe now.

We make fun of America, that they are proud of what they have built. In Europe we are not proud of what we have built. The crisis pushed Europe to integrate faster than ever. If 10 years ago, someone had talked about the fiscal compact, it would have been complete blasphemy. Helping each other like we do today is quite unprecedented. So I hope Europe will come out of this better and stronger. In the good old days, half of Europe was missing. I see crises as an opportunity for Europe to move forward.

But what about all the Eurosceptic feelings about Europe and euro?

Compared to the 1920s and 1930s, it does not represent a serious danger.

What do you think of the European austerity policies that have been implemented since the beginning of the crisis?

We can compare it to America, which is still doing the same thing, adding more fiscal energy, more deficits, and printing money. Here in Europe, we are trying to bite the bullet. We know that we have become drug dependent on deficit, and we need to go through a painful detox. If we won't do this, the economy will kill us.

We have to be competitive because of China and other emerging markets. Yes, we are doing austerity in the most inopportune time. In Davos last year, the topic was the great transformation, looking for new models. You never ask yourself who you are until you get into trouble.

How do you explain that some German politicians refuse to pay for the debts of the Greeks or Portuguese and impose austerity?

The debate is whether Greece is a market or a part of the family. If somebody from the family breaks a leg, you run and help them, but if your baker breaks a leg, you go to another one. No hard feelings, you are not interested in the baker, you are interested in buying a bread. In America they don't have a problem with this, they were doing transfers from state to state for hundreds of years, but you don't see it much, because it's a federation. In France you do it as well, stronger regions sending money to a weaker ones. We do the same thing in the Czech Republic. So we have to ask, who is our neighbour, is it only France or is it also Greece?

We know that crises give the opportunity to rethink the economic models. What would you advise to the European leaders to avoid leading their countries into more deficit?

Some generations ago, European politics had two hands to influence the economy, one to control the monetary policy, the other to influence fiscal policy. Simply put, monetary policy is the monopoly of the government to print money, whereas fiscal policy is the monopoly of government to print debt. Now, we have taken monetary policy away from the politicians, and we have tied their hands behind their backs.

So, politicians in Europe nowadays can't print money. They still have the one hand, so they can print as much debt as they want, and not much can stop them. The pressure from the European Union and the markets is not enough. The markets react too little and too late, and the European target that we have agreed on as a federation, for nations not have deficits of more than a 3 per cent of the GDP, has proven not to be powerful enough to reduce deficits.

So this is why Europe doesn't have a problem with inflation, this is why we are trying to solve everything with only one hand, by printing debt. The debate today is about whether we should free both hands or whether we should also tie the second hand. I believe the role of the government should be a minimal and that governments should also give up their control over the level of deficit produced.

If you look at the state of Europe, what myths or film you would compare it to?

The Lord of the Rings. Elves and Dwarves hate each other, while Hobbits gather around and live together throughout the difficult times. When everything was fine, nobody was interested in Europe. We started to take for granted that we have peace and commerce. The idea of the European Union was to make trade, not war. The Second World War was a result of the fetishisation of the idea of the nation state. We can view the European Union as an answer to that fetishisation. What we have done, and it was an ingenious move, was to exchange the geographical growth of a nation with its economic growth. But we don't think of GDP of Europe: we still think of GDP of France versus that of Germany versus that of Greece. There is no doubt that trading geographical growth for an economical one is positive and a good thing. Now that we have growth in the economies, we can also trade that for growth in other areas, such as culture, social interaction and other important domains.

According to a report on inequality and poverty in OECD member countries, Sweden is the state where the gap between low and high incomes is increasing fastest.

Sweden is still one of the top 10 countries for economic equality, however, Svenska Dagbladet points out that —

… most Swedes have experienced an increase in their standard of living in recent decades, but the wealth gap is growing fast. […] Sweden is the country where the level of relative poverty has increased the most since 1995 [from 4 per cent of the population to 9 per cent], which is why it has slid from first place to 14th position in the rankings, although it still remains over the OECD average of (11 per cent of the population in relative poverty).

According to the newspaper, the negative change, which “began to hit home at the end of the 2000s,” mainly affects —

… the sick, the unemployed and pensioners, who are worse off today than they were in 2006. Their benefits have not increased, and, in some cases they have been reduced. At the same time, they have not gained any advantage from the tax cuts offered by the [Fredrik] Reinfeldt government.

In a verdict announced on May 13, the federal court in Germany ruled that Google's auto-complete system, which automatically generates search suggestions, infringes the rights of individuals and companies.

To illustrate the issue, the compact edition of Die Welt publishes the suggestions prompted by a search on Angela Merkel —

Angela Merkel / Angela Merkel naturism / Angela Merkel twitter / Angela Merkel CV / Angela Merkel swimsuit / Angela Merkel Joachim Sauer [Angela Merkel’s husband] / Angela Merkel thesis / Angela Merkel private / Angela Merkel contact / Angela Merkel holidays

“In this case, the search terms added by Google are moderate and amusing,” notes the daily. But from now on Google will be obliged to remove them if someone believes his or her rights are being infringed.

The court ruled in favour of a businessman who sued Google for automatically associating “scientology” and “fraud” with his name.

At the demography summit held in Berlin on May 14, Angela Merkel asked her government to facilitate the mobility of workers within the EU.

“Because we will have six million fewer workers in 2025, we should be open to young people who want to come to our country,” said the chancellor.

Germany offers good conditions for immigrants but suffers from a reputation of being a standoffish country, explains Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. German Interior Minister Hans Peter Friedrich is mainly counting on an influx of skilled workers from the countries of southern Europe.

According to a new bill drafted by the government, Poles aged less than 35 “will be able to count on substantial state support when buying their first flat or home,” reports Gazeta Wyborcza.

The government is willing to cover 10 per cent of the final price in case of childless couples and single people. Those with children will receive a 15 per cent subsidy.

The provisional law, which has yet to be passed by the Sejm parliament, could come into effect from 2014, notes the daily. According to Home Broker analysis, 41.2 per cent of Poles live in what the EU categorises as overpopulated homes.

The Italian housing market went through its worst slump in 28 years in 2012, with 150,000 fewer transactions than in 2011.

The paradox, notes the Corriere della Sera, is that “while houses are now worth less, buying them costs more,” as crisis-hit banks provide fewer loans and sellers ask for more money.

Italians are above the EU average in terms of the proportion who own their primary home.

Rising unemployment suggests the housing crisis will not end soon. On May 14, a man set himself alight in protest at the fact his house was being auctioned because he was unable to repay a €10,000 debt.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has proposed an “asymmetric deficit distribution” among the country’s regions, asking for "generosity” to allow Catalonia a 2013 deficit level higher than the 0.7 per cent of GDP currently set for each Spanish region.

But Rajoy is now facing a rebellion in his own People’s Party (PP), as leaders of three regions ruled by the PP – Extremadura, Madrid and Aragon, which complied with 2012 deficit targets – condemned the proposal, saying it would amount to “preferential treatment” for Catalonia.

Other PP-controlled regions are also likely to object to the special status granted to Catalonia.

The London offices of oil giants BP and Shell were raided on May 15 by investigators from the European Commission probing allegations that companies were manipulating the price of crude oil.

This is the latest investigation into price fixing in the UK, following probes into the manipulation of the Libor interest rate and gas prices, writes The Independent, adding that:

the EC’s decisive action escalated a campaign that has been gathering momentum in recent months, after a report for the G20 last summer found that the market is wide open to ‘manipulation or distortion’.

“Now that the Eurozone crisis is over, time to finish the job with the banks,” announces the front-page of NRC Handelsblad, in the wake of the European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s May 11 remarks that “the ECB will examine the possibility of buying property loans from banks.” For the daily, this assertion is confirmation that in both Brussels and Frankfurt, the view is that “the worst of the Eurozone crisis has passed.”

“Now”, notes the daily, “we are beginning to see the underlying problem, which is that many banks have yet to be completely cleaned up.” Even though the Eurozone crisis resulted from the 2007 banking crisis — when states took on debts to restore liquidity and prevent the collapse of national banks — there are still too many banks with toxic assets on their books.” NRC explains that these zombie banks, have meant that the European economy is like “a fish out of water,” because they create a climate in which banks are unwilling to lend, and consumers are unwilling to spend.

In contrast to the United States and Switzerland, where measures to resolve the banking crisis proved more effective, one of the problems in the Eurozone is that banking supervisors “encounter opposition from politicians,” who, as the newspaper points out —

… do not have a mission to clean up the European economy, if that means closing their own banks. No, their mission is to keep national champions on their feet. In an landscape crowded with pan-European banks, supervisors take shelter behind national boundaries, and exchanges of information are rare, and even dishonest.

A banking union could resolve this problem, but it would require modification of European treaties, adds NRC, which alludes to a recent article by Wolfgang Schaüble in the Financial Times, in which the German Finance Minister affirmed that the ECB could not repair balance sheets, because that would amount to “monetary financing.”

“The New Sick Man of Europe: the European Union”: this was the title chosen by the Pew Research Center — an American thinktank which surveys and compares public opinion in 40 countries every year — for its study conducted last March, which surveyed 7,600 people in eight EU countries (France, Germany, Britian, Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, and Greece).

The findings, remarks Libération, retrace “the blighted love story” between Europe and its citizens. “In 2012-13, support for the EU fell from a median of 60 per cent to a median of 45 per cent” — a slump that leads us to conclude that “the popularity of the European Union has reached a record low [...] in most European countries.”

“However”, argues the daily’s deputy editor, in spite of “these sombre results[…], there are several good reasons to sustain hope in the solidity of the [European] edifice” —

… Europeans have shown themselves to be paradoxically fond of the euro. [...] Some 63 per cent of French respondents want to keep the European currency, which is also favoured by 69 per cent of Greeks, 67 per cent of Spaniards, 64 per cent of Italians and even 66 per cent of Germans.

“The Germans are distinguished by the solidity of their faith in Europe,” explains Libération, with 60 per cent of the population on the other side of the Rhine in favour of the EU.

It is a far cry from the bitterness in Metropolitan France, where only 41 per cent of residents have a positive view of the EU. For “the first time, attitudes in France are similar to those in Greece,” remarks one of the authors of the report, Bruce Stokes.

German daily Die Welt notes that a “growing divergence of opinion on the EU” has notably emerged between France and Germany. At the same time, the newspaper remarks that —

… the French have less confidence in EU institutions than the Italians and the Spanish. [...] Confidence in national governments has also declined in France and the crisis stricken countries of southern Europe. In contrast, Chancellor Angela Merkel benefits from a positive image. Notwithstanding the harsh criticism of her austerity policies in numerous European states, 74 per cent of German respondents believe that she is doing a good job of managing the crisis.

The Swedish company H&M and the Spanish group Inditex, which owns Zara, “are to sign a legally binding building and fire safety agreement” for factories producing their clothing in Bangladesh, reports De Morgen.

The initiative has come three weeks after the collapse of a building in Dhaka, which resulted in the death of 1,100 people.

The daily notes that marketing experts believe the “move by the garment makers has mainly been motivated by pressure from consumers and public opinion, and fears that their reputations may be compromised.”

"The European Union prepares its entire arsenal to fight youth unemployment," writes the financial daily, as the French and German governments prepare to unveil a €60bn plan, known as the “New Deal for Europe”, on May 28.

The new scheme will mastermind a seven-year push to find jobs for people aged under 25, while Brussels will also ask European countries with high unemployment to go even further with their labour market reforms, continues the daily.

Meanwhile European Employment Commissioner Laszlo Andor prompted Spain on May 13 to adopt “a single open-ended contract” to fight youth unemployment, but Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy, refuses to introduce further labour market reforms.

“Eurozone finance ministers agreed to authorise the payment of a double tranche of aid to Greece worth €7.5bn at a meeting held in Brussels on May 13,” reports I Kathimerini.

“The first tranche of €4.2bn will be transferred on May 17, and the second is to follow in June,” notes the daily, which points out this payment will be conditional on an overhaul of Greece’s tax system, the liberalisation of certain professions and the reform of the country’s civil service.

The daily adds that “the European Commission reckons deficit targets for 2013 and 2014 will be met. However, it also believes that further efforts to the tune of €7.6bn will be required for 2015-2016.”

“British and American speculative funds are gambling on the recovery of Greek banks,” explains Der Standard, which points out that —

Hedge funds are once again buying bank shares and corporate bonds to take advantage of the high yields they offer.

Since June 2012, speculation on government bonds has netted them hundreds of millions of euros, adds the daily.

The Eurogroup approved the release of a €3bn tranche of aid to Cyprus at a meeting on May 13, of which €2bn was transferred on the same day. The third billion is to be delivered in June in the form of Treasury bills. The transfers are part of a €10bn bailout package, which was agreed in March.

In exchange for the release of funds, Phileleftheros reports that the Eurozone finance ministers have “demanded that Nicosia and the EU-ECB-IMF troika establish an action plan on the thorny issue” of money laundering. They are also insisting on the “rapid application of the adjustment programme” agreed by the Cypriot government with its creditors.

Milan prosecutors announced on May 13 that they are seeking a six year jail sentence and lifelong ban on holding public office for former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi over charges of bribery and underage prostitution.

They believe “there’s no doubt that Karima El Mahroug [the 17-year-old Moroccan girl who Berlusconi claimed was the niece of Hosni Mubarak in order to avoid her being jailed for theft] had sex with Berlusconi.” The politician, who is alleged to have paid Ms El Mahroug more than €4.5m for sex in 2010, said the claims are the product of “lies and hate”. The court is expected to announce its verdict on June 24.

Berlusconi’s supporters staged a demonstration last week against “communist judges” after he lost his appeal against a conviction for tax fraud, which has jeopardised the unity of the coalition government with Democratic Party (PD).

UK Prime Minister David Cameron will take the “highly unusual” step of publishing draft legislation on May 14, committing the government to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU by 2017.

The move comes after the PM came under huge pressure from Conservative MPs to write his January pledge to give the British people a vote on the country’s relationship with the EU into law, after it did not feature in last week’s Queen’s Speech.

The plan was revealed late on Monday on the sidelines of Cameron’s meeting with Barack Obama, in which the US president backed the PM’s efforts to renegotiate Britain’s EU relationship.

It also comes ahead of a parliamentary vote called by Conservative MPs criticising the fact the referendum did not feature in the Queen’s speech.

Almost two years since the launch of the indignados movement on May 15, 2011, El Periódico de Catalunya reports on the Sunday demonstrations in some 20 cities across Spain. For the newspaper, the protests highlighted "the initial popular response to the crisis" and the first austerity measures adopted by the socialist government of that era.

The anniversary is an opportunity to assess the impact of the protests, notes the newspaper, which argues that the outlook for the demonstration’s 15-M Movement is not an optimistic one.

Although it still has a presence on social networks, the movement has been weakened to the point where it has disappeared from the media: a result of the absence of concrete goals, a lack of leadership, and the diversity or non-existence of spokesmen and women.

However, "something much more important" remains, continues El Periódico —

… the seeds of social protest it planted have grown into major movements that have occupied the streets in recent months. [15-M] paved the way for the power of the Platform for those Affected by Mortgages (PAH) and the massive groundswell of protest from across the political spectrum […] which has deplored cuts to health care, education and other sectors affected by a downsizing of the welfare state decided by those charged with the management of the crisis. The call to “unmask” the system, which was the watchword for these anniversary demonstrations is an apt expression of the transition from indignation to rebellion.

In Belgium this year, “€63.17bn will change hands in the black economy,” reports De Morgen. The Brussels daily reports that according to a study conducted in 31 European countries by the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria, the Belgian shadow economy represents 16.4 per cent of total economic activity of the country. That is the lowest level in 10 years, but still the highest of all West European countries: in Germany the rate is 13 per cent, while it is 9.9 per cent in France and 9.1 per cent in The Netherlands.

The average size of the European black economy is 18.5 per cent of GDP, a decrease from 22.3 per cent in 2003, notes De Morgen, adding that eastern Europe is the area that rates the worst in Europe.

Despite the strong growth of the economy, the black market there is still big, with peaks above 30 per cent in Bulgaria. Still, there is some improvement. In southern Europe that is no longer the case. The push back of the informal economy has stagnated. Countries like Portugal, Spain and Italy have a black economy of around 20 per cent of the official one. In Greece that number goes up to 25.4 per cent. For the entire European Union the shadow economy is estimated at €2.1trn.

One solution would be to “discourage the use of cash,” the newspaper writes:

For real estate transactions – even for advances – paying in cash will soon be forbidden. It would be logical to expand this to sectors such as the art trade and the buying and selling of second hand cars and jewellery.

“It is in the small Swiss town of Bellinzona on the Italian border that a trial will begin today [May 13] that could have historic implications for both the Czech Republic and Switzerland,” writes Hospodářské noviny.

Four executives (three Czechs and one Belgian) of the Czech mining company MUS are facing corruption and money laundering charges relating to the alleged misappropriation of corporate assets between 1997 and 2003, and the acquisition of 97 per cent of the company’s shares.

The trial, which is set to run for two months, has come at a time when Switzerland is eager to present itself as a more transparent country, remarks the business daily.

In the May 12 general election, the conservative Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (Gerb) led by outgoing Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, which won 30.1 per cent of the vote, was awarded 98 of the 240 seats in the country’s parliament. The Bulgarian Socialist Party led by Sergei Stanishev obtained 26.1 per cent and was given 86 seats. The two other parties with scores above the 4 per cent threshold are the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (33 seats), which represents the country’s Muslim minority, and the ultra-nationalist Ataka (23 seats).

Barely more than three months after the fall of the government in the wake of a wave of anti-poverty demonstrations, the country has once again been plunged into political deadlock, points out Standart, which remarks that in a situation where none of the parties received enough votes to govern alone and all of the parties have ruled out an alliance with Gerb, “the formation of a new government will be a difficult puzzle."

For its part, the daily Troud wonders about the possibility of "Everyone against the Gerb," a scenario that has already been alluded to by the socialists, but one which would rely on their party forming a coalition with Ataka as well as the Movement of Rights and Freedoms.

In an interview with Népszabadság, Green MEP Rui Tavares, the author of a draft report on fundamental rights in Hungary, which was published on May 2, advocates the establishment of monitoring and alert mechanisms.

The goal, emphasises the daily, is to avoid recourse to the “nuclear weapon” of Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty, which stipulates that in the event of serious violation of European values, member states may have their voting rights suspended.

Rui Tavares rejects accusations of bias and claims he is “open” to discussion of the draft report, which has been strongly criticised by the Viktor Orbán government and the conservative Hungarian press.

“Germany’s population is shrinking and aging,” reports Handelsblatt on the eve of a summit on demography organised by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The daily points out that the number of residents in the country declined from 82.5 million in 2003 to 81.7 million in 2011, and this figure is expected to fall to 65 million in 2060.

If Germany does not take action, the workforce will shrink from 50 million to 42 million by 2030. The business daily notes that “Economics Minister Philipp Rösler is counting on immigration” to resolve the problem. For her part, Angela Merkel is expected to call on companies to continue to provide training for older employees.

Days after North American companies Marathon Oil and Talisman Energy stopped shale gas fracking in Poland, news emerges that the country’s chief geologist and deputy environment minister Piotr Woźniak spoke out against US companies investing in shale gas extraction in Poland, claims Rzeczpospolita.

The daily quotes a confidential memo by an employee of an embassy of “one of the interested countries”, which was written after a private meeting held in Warsaw on March 13 with 130 investors, businessmen and diplomats in which the politician is reported to have made the comments.

Meanwhile another participant quoted by the daily argues that

People responsible for the energy sector are pushing ahead with the idea of keeping the energy industry in Polish hands.

Meeting in Brussels on May 13, Eurozone finance ministers are expected to approve the first tranche of €3bn in aid for Cyprus. “Two billion euros will be transferred in mid-May, and a third billion at the end of June,” reports Politis.

The newspaper points out that of the €10bn stipulated in the memorandum of agreement with the EU-ECB-IMF troika of international creditors, “€9bn will be provided by the European Stability Mechanism and €1bn by the International Monetary Fund,” and adds that the IMF contribution “will have to be discussed and approved on May 15.”

“Eurogroup will also examine a report on money laundering in Cyprus,” reports the daily, which notes that —

… Finland and Slovakia have demanded that transfer of the tranche be subject to additional conditions focusing on laundering by Cypriot banks.

Education Minister Michael Gove and Defence Secretary Philip Hammond have publically stated they would vote to leave the EU, should a referendum be held now, dealing a damaging blow to Prime Minister David Cameron.

These comments follow similar calls for a British withdrawal made last week by senior party figure and former chancellor Nigel Lawson, and contrast with the PM’s EU plan.

“Dozens of Conservative MPs,” reports The Guardian, are preparing to take part in a vote later this week, complaining at the fact that the Queen’s May 8 speech, outlining the government’s planned legal reforms, contained no pledge to hold an in-out poll on Britain’s EU membership.

A lot can change in two years. When we interviewed Mario Monti on the sidelines of the State of the Union conference during the Festival d’Europa in Florence in 2011, the former European commissioner and president of Bocconi University spoke spontanously, during a coffee break. Now that he has added Prime Minister of Italy to his list of former accolades, a bodyguard-surrounded Monti keeps a hectic schedule at the conference’s 2013 edition. However, after a short press conference with Italian journalists eager for his views on his successor Enrico Letto's new coalition government, Monti accepted to speak with Presseurop.

Two years ago, Monti shared his thoughts on the threats of the crisis on the unique market and the euro. The future of these two pillars of the European Union now seem guaranteed, regardless of how the EU and its member states deal with the crisis. We asked Monti if he believed the current atmosphere in Europe was more favourable to resolving the crisis today than in 2011.

I have the impression that it is. We have made many concrete moves to end the crisis. We have also directed European policy toward the future, drafting an outline that is about to be finalised of a plan for a true economic and monetary union, under the guidance of the group presided by [European Council President] Herman Van Rompuy. I also believe heads of state and government are finally taking the political and psychological impact of nationalism and populism more seriously into account. I believe economic policy must change, but not out of pressure from nationalists and populists. If we want to adopt certain policies in a climate exposed to the risks presented by nationalism and populism, care must be taken to proceed with caution.

Throughout his mandate as prime minister, particularly during spring of 2012, Monti attempted, alongside French president François Hollande and Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy, to rebalance relations between member states and get Germany to soften its position on many issues. We asked for his thoughts on what the different perspectives and current tensions between France and Germany meant for the continuation of the European project.

I remain convinced that strong Franco-German ties are an essential condition for Europe to move forward. But if it is essential, it is also not enough. It is also very important for France and Germany not to give the impression they are being exclusive and discriminatory. I believe this was partly the case during the years of cooperation between Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, and much less so now between Mrs. Merkel and François Hollande.

“Three quarters of families who want to adopt a child refuse outright to take Roma children”, regrets Romania liberă, after studying the data published by the National Office of Adoptions for 2012.

The Romanians who get “beyond the prejudices”, like the teacher posing on the daily’s front page alongside her “darker-skinned” daughter, are rather an exception. “Romanians are racist”, openly admits a pastor who has adopted two Roma children.

These prejudices persist due to “deficiencies in education”, Cristina Neacşu, psychologist of the Romanian Office for Adoptions, tells the paper:

[the families who want to adopt] come here with preconceived ideas. We tell them that there's no gene for crime or aggression. Others are afraid that the child up for adoption will be stigmatised.

In 2012, of the 1,222 families who were accepted as prospective adoptive families, 875 stipulated in writing that they wanted only “Romanian children, excluding any other ethnic group”.

“The statistics show that the Romanians prefer to wait for years for the state find a compatible child rather than adopt a Roma minor,” notes România liberă.

On May 8, the National Court of Spain rejected a request submitted by Bern to extradite Hervé Falciani with what amounts to a “very harsh ruling for Switzerland and the bank HSBC," notes El Mundo. The court took the view that none of the charges faced by Falciani, and in particular the theft of banking secrets and economic espionage, “were considered offences in Spain". The daily remarks that —

… the man who informed on tax evaders can continue touring countries concerned by the intricacies of the enormous quantities of data he amassed over several years he spent working as computer technician for HSBC in Geneva.

With regard to his next port of call, El Mundo points out that —

Falciani is now free to travel to the United States, which is ready to welcome him with open arms.

“Spain has proudly given the finger to Switzerland,” writes Libération, in a report that remarks on the poisonous impact that Falciani’s delivery of 130,000 HSBC records to French authorities has had on Franco-Swiss diplomatic relations.

Also in France, news website Mediapart notes that Falciani’s lawyer “is counting on the Spanish decision to encourage the European Union to assume its responsibilities”. Lawyer William Bourdon believes —

… it is a decision that looks to the future, which should pave the way for a common European legislation: that is to say a law which encourages and protects those who serve the general interest by disclosing secrets, and thereby reduce the capacity of banks to act as accomplices to tax evasion and havens for dirty money.

According to Le Soir, between January and April of this year, the fiscal rulings office registered 1,715 adjustment declarations for money that had hitherto escaped the attention of tax authorities.

According to the Belgian daily, the influx of previously undeclared funds has likely been prompted by “the government’s announcement of an imminent tax amnesty”. The operation, which could take place as soon as July, “will likely be followed by an increase in charges for adjustments.”

For the newspaper, this prospect has led —

large numbers of “sly foxes” to take advantage of the permanent adjustment mechanism, which has been in operation since 2006, to bring back their shekels from tax oblivion.

Public school teachers staged a strike on May 9 in protest of reforms proposed by Education Minister José Ignacio Wert, which were to be presented in Friday’s weekly cabinet meeting but have been postponed. Organisers claim 72 per cent of teachers and 90 per cent of students joined the protest, but the government says there was only a 20 per cent turnout. In its editorial, El Pais says there was “no consensus” and that “a reform so roundly rejected should not be imposed.” The reforms would impose an estimated €6.7bn in spending cuts.

The European Commission may drop the excessive deficit procedure against Hungary, "on condition that it stays on course for budgetary consolidation."

On May 3, Brussels acknowledged that Hungary’s deficit was well below 3 per cent of GDP in 2012, but that it is expected to rise slightly above this threshold in 2013 and 2014.

The government led by Viktor Orbán announced that it would adopt measures which are "compatible the country’s current social and economic policies," that is to say: it will refuse to implement "measures demanded by the Union of other countries: no tax increases on individuals or SMEs, and no reduction in welfare spending."

The Milan court of appeal decided on Wednesday, May 8, to uphold Silvio Berlusconi’s four-year jail sentence and five-year ban on holding public office for his conviction on charges of manipulating television right payments in order to avoid taxes.

The verdict, condemned by Berlusconi’s People of Freedom Party (PDL) as another chapter in the “perennial persecution” against the former prime minister, is not expected to have any real consequences, since the offence expires in 2014 and the case still has to be heard at another level of justice.

Nonetheless, PDL called for a demonstration against “leftist judges” to be held on Saturday, May 11, in Brescia. The court’s decision, along with another trial for underage prostitution that Berlusconi will be facing in the coming weeks, also threaten the fledgling coalition government of PDL and the Democratic party.

“Wall Street’s renewed health is spreading to other markets, and in particular to Europe, which is a poor relation in terms of economic growth,” writes Les Echos.

In Frankfurt, the DAX “has gained 124 per cent since March 2009,” while the FTSE in London “has reached its highest level since November 1, 2007”.

For the business daily, “the markets have benefited from a number of favourable elements,” notably encouraging figures for industrial production in the United Kingdom and Germany, positive corporate results, and a calming of tensions on the issue of sovereign debt.

The stabilisation of the debt crisis —

has reassured investors, who did not fail to take advantage of Portugal’s return to financial markets [an encouraging sign for Greece which is hoping to resume bond sales before 2014].

Prime Minister Alenka Bratušek has announced a vast programme of privatisations and an increase in the Value Added Tax from 20 to 22 per cent on July 1. Expected for several days, the measures, which were made public on May 8, aim to preempt the risk of a banking crisis without calling on international aid.

For now, the government has set aside plans for an “emergency tax”, although it may be introduced at a later date if the new measures fail to have the intended impact, explains Delo. The newspaper adds that the goal is to reduce the country’s spending deficit, which is expected to rise from 4 per cent of GDP in 2012 to 7.8 per cent in 2013, to 3.3 per cent in 2014. It has also entered into negotiations with unions with a view to cutting public service salaries.

Fifteen state-owned companies are to be privatised. They include the country’s second largest bank, Nova KBM Bank, its main telecoms operator, Telekom Slovenia, the Adria Airways airline, and the operator of Ljubljana airport.

The British government’s tax and revenue department has started acting on leaked data about wealthy individuals concealing billions of pounds in secret offshore bank accounts.

Chancellor George Osborne sent a blunt message to the tax evaders and to 200 accountants and advisors working on their behalf: “The message is simple: if you evade tax, we’re coming after you.” The tax department added that "criminal prosecution or significant penalties" would befall those who do not voluntarily disclose their tax irregularities.

The Guardian reports the department’s data on the wealthy tax evaders is the same information the daily accessed in its Offshore Leaks investigation into tax havens, published in March.

Is there still a reason to celebrate Europe Day and the anniversary of the Schuman Declaration, which led to the founding of the European Union? Not really, I hear you say.

Caught in the grip of the most severe economic and institutional crisis since WWII, Europe is going from bad to worse. To name but a few of the obstacles it faces: Europe has to contend with a rift between a virtuous North whose solidarity has been all but exhausted and a South that is lagging behind; with an integration process that has been blocked by states which jealously guard their sovereignty; with the isolationism advocated by some and the confrontation proposed by others; and with the disaffection of its citizens. In short, for its most ardent opponents, it is only a matter time before the EU collapses.

However, there are reasons to believe that Europe has already hit bottom and may be on the way back. The signs that this is the case are not easily descernible — let’s say that you need a good magnifying glass and a hefty dose of optimism to see them. But they are there nonetheless.

The banking union, which will be indispensable if we are to avoid another sovereign debt crisis, appears to be taking shape. On May 7, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble described it as a “priority project”, and one that he wants to see implemented “quickly”.

The euro, which looked to be on the way out six months ago, is doing better, and it now appears obvious that no one in Europe, and particularly not Berlin, wants to it to disappear. The countries of the eurozone also seem to have come to terms with the fact that they cannot continue to share the same currency without coordinating their economic policies.

With regard to recovery, it appears that Berlin, which has now realised that its interests are best served by European partners that are diligent, but not to the point where they are bled dry, has begun to soften its position on budgetary austerity — a change of tune which had already been heard in Brussels. No doubt, the pressure exerted by Paris, Madrid and the new Italian government had much to do with this development.

In short, we are still in the tunnel but there is a light ahead. And no, it is not the headlight of an oncoming train.

A total of 1.08 million people, including 966,000 foreigners, moved to Germany in 2012. The highest figure since 1995, reports Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which headlines with “Immigration to Germany reaches record level in 2012”.

According to the Federal Statistical Office, immigration increased by 13 per cent when compared to 2011. Most of the immigrants were from Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.

German authorities expressed their delight with the figures: “This influx represents an enormous opportunity for everyone concerned, because the new wave of immigrants is younger and better trained,” declared the Minister of Labour, Ursula von der Leyen.

In spite of the numbers arriving in the country, tens of thousands of vacancies, notably in the healthcare sector, have yet to be filled. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung explains that the shortfall will soon be addressed by “new employment regulations, set to come into force on July 1, which will facilitate the immigration of specialised workers,” and also open the labour market to non-EU citizens.

The countries of central and eastern Europe, as well as southern European states hard hit by the crisis, are the major sources for migrant labour in Germany. As El País explains —

… the bulk of today’s migrants come from eastern Europe. But the largest upsurge is in the numbers arriving from countries affected by the euro crisis: notably Spain (31,145 in 2012), Greece (34,109) and Portugal (11,762). […] The main countries of origin from within the EU are Poland (176,000), followed by Romania (116,000) and Bulgaria (59,000).

Italy is not far behind: more than 42,000 Italians emigrated to Germany last year, notes Il Manifesto, whose front page compares Germany to “Lamerica”, the America that inspired the dreams of late 19th Century emigrants. According to the communist daily the influx —

… is an advantage for Germany, which has a declining population and needs to renew its workforce. However, for the countries of the South, which spend on the education of the young graduates who make up the bulk of the migrants, it represents a loss.

This success is largely due to the efficiency of the German Federal Employment Agency, explains Mediapart —

… the Bundesagentur für Arbeit publishes hundreds of thousands of vacancies on its website, which is accessible in several languages. It also seeks out workers on foreign labour markets, which have been devastated, and organises delocalised job centres.

However, the French news website notes —

Access to the new Eldorado requires a certain effort [...] Along with a mastery of the language, which is indispensable for those in search of skilled jobs, there are other obstacles to moving to the country […]: the non-recognition of certain qualifications, the fact that many employers, and in particular SMEs, are reticent about recruiting foreigners, and administrative barriers for low-skilled jobs. The reality can even prove to be disappointing, in particular for the many graduates of universities in southern countries, who have to put up with precarious part-time work and the absence of recognition for their degrees.

“The EU has issued a warning about increasing numbers of young people travelling to fight in Syria,” announces El Mundo, which reports on recent declarations by the European counter-terrorism co-ordinator, an organisation which answers to the European Council.

In the absence of common statistics for all of the EU, the warning is based on data from King’s College London’s International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), which estimates that between 7 and 11 per cent of the foreign fighters who have joined groups combating the Bashar al-Assad regime are from the European Union —

This figure represents close to 500 young people, who have been recruited by the jihadi cells that are present in several European countries, particularly in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

“Recruitment has intensified over recent months,” and the alert level in The Netherlands has been raised in response to fears of a possible terrorist attack, continues El Mundo. The newspaper further reports that the issue will be on the agenda for discussion at the EU interior ministers’ meeting, scheduled for May 8, which is expected to adopt measures to help member states counter this growing threat.

"The quality of the land, good prices and the possibility of obtaining subsidies have attracted foreign investors," points out Jurnalul Naţional, which reports that several European newspapers have described Romania as a "new Eldorado".

Under the terms of the country's EU accession treaty, Romania is obliged to deregulate its property market from January 1, 2014 — a move that will remove restrictions on land acquisitions by foreigners. However, in the runup to this date, enterprising investors from abroad have already purchased 10 per cent of the agricultural land in the country via locally registered companies.

According to official figures, 10m of the 11m hectares of agricultural land in Romania are currently under cultivation. But other more realistic estimates set the current level of land use at just 40 per cent.

Jurnalul Naţional is worried by the prospect of agro-industrial multinationals, which make use of monoculture, buying up land owned by small farmers. It is a concern that is shared by Minister of Agriculture, Daniel Constantin, who recently negotiated a deal to improve credit facilities for Romanian farmers with the country’s banks. From now on, the owners of small holdings will be able to use newly purchased land as collateral for loans, which was not possible in the past.

At a press conference in Valletta on May 7, MEPs José Bové and Bart Staes presented a leaked report by the supervisory committee of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) on the investigation of former European Health Commissioner, John Dalli. It was on the basis of the investigation that Commission President José Manuel Barroso obliged Dalli to resign last October. Published on May 7, by news website Malta Today, the report questions some of the methods used by OLAF in the course of its enquiries.

Quoting part of a statement by Bové and Staes, the newspaper says —

EC President Jose Manuel Barroso should shoulder responsibility [for the scandal] because “he ruined Malta’s image along with Mr Dalli’s reputation”.

The two MEPs also criticised the Commission President for his failure —

… to see that the OLAF supervisory committee was informed of the case immediately and […] [the fact that he] allowed the report to be handed to the relevant authorities without adopting the five-day time-frame rule which enables the supervisory committee to verify whether the procedures were followed correctly in terms of the investigation.

The European Commission aims to combat “insufficiently transparent” bank charges.

To this end, explains Der Standard, it is planning to introduce a common framework for information on charges, which will apply in all EU countries. Once it has been established, customers will regularly be informed of the costs associated with running their current accounts.

The project, which also includes regulations to make it easier to open a basic account and to switch to another bank, is to be presented on May 8 by the Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, Michel Barnier, and Health and Consumer Policy Commissioner Tonio Borg.

A court in Palma, Majorca, has provisionally dropped charges against Princess Cristina relating to her alleged complicity in a corruption case involving her husband, Iñaki Urdangarin.

The court ruled that arguments offered by the prosecution were "insufficient", but nonetheless recommended that it pursue further enquiries to clear up any "doubt or uncertainty" about the possibility of money laundering via the company, Aizoon, which is co-owned by the princess and her husband, who remains under investigation.

EU authorities, which recently granted France an additional two years to rein in its spending deficit, are nonetheless pressing Paris to push through reforms, writes Le Figaro.

On May 7, a day when French and German finance ministers — Pierre Moscovici and Wolfgang Schäuble — met in Berlin, the European Commission recommended that France should implement “audacious” reforms to improve competitiveness. Adding weight to this request, European Commission President Herman Van Rompuy urged Paris to introduce “far reaching” reform.

However, the conservative daily notes —

Burdened with an outsize public sector and held captive by a ruinous social model, France has taken no steps to implement the far reaching reforms that the Europeans are clamouring to see.

Shortly after 11pm on May 7, the Jolly Nero container ship was leaving Genoa port when it crashed into the control tower, causing the structure to collapse onto another building.

The bodies of four people, including two coastguards and a port pilot, have already been recovered from the wreckage and at least 6 others are still missing. The city mayor Marco Doria has declared a day of mourning.

The cause of the accident is still unknown, but some analysts suggest the 40,000-tonne ship’s engines may have stalled, rendering it uncontrollable.

A new YouGov poll commissioned by The Times found 42 per cent of respondents want a relationship with Europe based on free trade, while 21 per cent want a complete British withdrawal.

The survey is just the latest sign of the difficulties UK Prime Minister David Cameron faces in winning support for Britain’s continued relationship with the EU, ahead of a referendum on the matter due before 2017. The PM has vowed to negotiate a new deal with Europe.

The poll found that 46 per cent of people questioned said they would elect to leave the EU if there was an in-out referendum now, compared to 35 per cent who would choose to stay.

According to the daily —

Should Mr Cameron fail to negotiate a new relationship with Brussels more akin to a common market, MPs warned that he would find a significant number of his parliamentary party turning against him in his promised referendum.

Romania has taken a “discreet” step towards shale gas extraction, announces Jurnalul naţional. On April 29, the Environment Ministry gave the green light to foreign energy companies, including US giant Chevron, to explore by possible reserves in the south-eastern Dobrogea region.

The decision “has wrong-footed the public, who expected a public debate, and more importantly a presentation of environmental impact studies” before any such move, writes the daily, which quotes government minister, Rovana Plumb —

All the EU countries need energy independence and shale gas extraction is one means of attaining this goal.

The minister adds that “the exploration phase does not represent a risk to the environment, because there is no use of hydraulic fracturing technology” in the process of identifying potential reserves of the unconventional hydrocarbon, which can be found several thousand metres underground.

In response to the news, the Vama Verde environmental group announced that it would organise a protest in Vama Veche, in the Dobrogea region, and further demonstrations are planned for the end of the month.

Romania is following the example of Poland and the United Kingdom, the two European countries which have committed to shale gas exploration. Others, like France, have introduced a moratorium on the issue.

For three out of four Europeans, “the worst of the crisis has yet to come,” points out El País in its report on a poll published on May 7 by several European dailies. Conducted in April in Germany, Spain, France, Poland and the United Kingdom, the survey reveals some surprises, notes the daily –

Paradoxically, the Spanish are the most optimistic: 40 per cent of respondents believe that the situation will improve within a year, as opposed to 60 per cent who do not. [...] The persistent belief that the worst has yet to come is probably based on the conviction that the many sacrifices that have already been made will cause the situation to continue to deteriorate.

"This is the only encouraging data for Spain," remarks El País, because it shows that the Spanish "are the most sceptical" about reforms and austerity: 76 per cent believe that such measures will have a negative influence on both the economy and society. They are closely followed by the Italians, 71 per cent of whom are also opposed to such policies —

In general, more than half of Europe’s citizens agree with this hypothesis, which calls into question the benefits of expected changes in the future. Only the Poles have a 76 per cent majority in favour [of austerity].

But the award for pessimism goes to France, points out Le Monde

On average, 92 per cent of Europeans feel negatively about the future of their country and the fate of their fellow citizens. In Metropolitan France, 97 per cent of households see dark clouds on the horizon. [...] Worse still, 85 per cent of French citizens, as opposed to 75 per cent of Europeans, believe that things can only get worse in the future.

The daily notes that “this gloom has reinforced French sympathy for the fate of Latin countries.” However, this sentiment

… is not accompanied by a radical rejection of Europe: EU membership is still perceived as an advantage by 55 per cent of the French, while 57 per cent of Germans believe it to be a handicap.

Even if the “dreaded catastrophe, which has been fed by ongoing discussion, turns out to be a fantasy, [...] it remains a testament to a fear that goes beyond the current crisis. [...] The “number one” concern is not the possibility of losing one’s job, but of being unable to grow old with dignity (47 per cent) or of being denied access to proper health care (25 per cent).

In a feature entitled “SOS Brussels”, Le Soir worries that the city, which is “a cultural melting pot, is unable to cope with its diversity.” The daily adds that “with 75.6 per cent of its citizens from immigrant backgrounds, the population of the capital is three times as mixed as the one in Wallonia, and five times as the one in Flanders.” Foreigners are expected to account for 83 per cent of the city’s residents in 2023.

Sociologist Corinne Torrekens is quoted by the daily pointing out that —

Brussels is an increasingly cosmopolitan and multicultural city. However, this reality is often perceived as problem rather than a source of cultural wealth. Brussels continues to be an ethnically segregated, and there is a world of difference between the quality of life in districts inhabited by expatriates and EU civil servants, and working class neighbourhoods where most of the population is from immigrant backgrounds.”

Meeting in Madrid on May 6, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and his Italian counterpart Enrico Letta agreed to "pressure" the EU to approve a youth unemployment plan at the European Council summit in June.

The two leaders also emphasised the need for new policies to combat populism and anti-European sentiment, which is increasingly prevalent in all EU countries.

La Vanguardia remarks that the "Italian-Spanish front is still alive", and eager to exert pressure on northern countries and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to proceed with the implementation of measures decided at the Rome summit in June 2012. These include the progressive introduction of a banking and budgetary union in the EU.

In line with a deadline set by the European Commission, the Slovenian government is expected to present a package of reforms for the country’s economy and banking system before the end of this week.

The different parties in the ruling centre-left coalition led by Alenka Bratušek met on May 6 to discuss details of the initiative.

According to Večer, the main measure will be an emergency tax on private incomes of more than €600 to be introduced in July, which is expected to net the government €300m per annum.

A second plan to cut public spending is expected before 2014. Slovenia’s difficult financial situation has notably resulted from a crisis in the country’s banking sector.

The trial of five members of the neo-Nazi terrorist group NSU, which began on May 6 in Munich, was adjourned when lawyers for the main defendant challenged the impartiality of the judge, who had ordered that representatives of the defence be searched before entering the courtroom. Hearings will resume on May 14.

At the opening of the trial, “alleged neo-Nazi terrorist Beate Zschäpe did not say anything,” recounts Tageszeitung. The newspaper continues —

She chewed gum and showed no sign of emotion when looking at victims families [...] When silence reigns, it is a moment for the interpretation of non-verbal signs. At first glance, Beate Zschäpe is a woman approaching her 40s, dressed in a navy jacket and white blouse [...] With her arms folded, she appears to be physically very tense, […] and also serious, discrete, conventional, […] and careful about her appearance. […] The facade representing normality is a role that Zschäpe knows how to play.

Life senator Giulio Andreotti died on May 6 in Rome. He was aged 94. A leading member of the Christian Democracy party, which dominated Italian politics from 1946 to 1991, he was seven times elected as the head of government, and 21 times appointed to ministerial office. He was arguably the most noted Italian politician of the second half of the 20th Century.

In the course of his long career, his political ability, his talent for irony, and his capacity to emerge unscathed from scandals earned him several nicknames — including “Beelzebub”, “the Divine” (Il Divo), and “the Fox”, points out Corriere della Sera —

Neither the trials for collusion with the Mafia — in which the statute of limitations was solely responsible for his acquittal on some of the charges — or a power that was characterised by rules, references and players that were light years away from him, were able to break him. In a world that was divided between the West and communism, he appeared eternal. It was “his” world, in which he evolved with the class and cynicism of one who knows everything of its public appearances and its behind-the-scenes machinations.

Sixty detained asylum seekers have been refusing to eat and drink in a Rotterdam prison since May 6, in protest at the “inhumane detention of refugees”.

A week ago 20 asylum seekers in a detention centre in Schiphol also began a hunger strike, with 10 still refusing to feed themselves.

The main reason for the protest is the difference in the treatment of asylum seekers on the basis of how they arrive in the country. Those who arrive by plane are incarcerated, sometimes for more than six months, while those who arrive over land borders are not.

The UNHCR and the organisation for refugees VluchtelingenWerk argue that the incarceration and treatment of refugees at Schiphol is more severe than is permitted under international law.

The European Union is planning to impose import taxes on Chinese-made solar panel equipment in a move which is likely to trigger “one of the largest trade battles of recent decades,” writes the business daily.

The duties, which will include solar panels, their primary components, solar cells and silicon wafers, are expected to average 46 per cent, according to the newspaper’s sources, and are intended to protect solar equipment manufacturing firms within Europe from a tide of cheap Chinese imports. They could be imposed as early as June 5.

Dozens of European firms have closed since China entered the market six years ago, amid claims by European manufacturers that Chinese firms receive illegal state subsidies.

Europe is the world’s largest solar panel market and in 2011, China controlled 80 per cent of the European market, trade that was worth around €21bn or about 7 per cent of China’s total exports to Europe, reports the paper.

Buying second-hand clothing, exchanging services with neighbours, car-pooling or even going on holiday in a group are just some of the new habits taken up by those "Slovaks who have not been broken by the crisis, but who have learned to live with it", headlines Pravda. The daily looks into the change in people's behaviour caused by an enduring economic crisis, in a country where making ends meet evokes the poverty of the socialist period. And so, notes a sociologist in the columns of Pravda,

even though they may have a “draft in their wallets”, some people continue to buy brands, as they need to show that they can afford them. But more and more people think differently: [...] 'Alternative consumption' is becoming more frequent, though it remains a much less common trend in Slovakia than in the richer countries of western Europe because of the socialist past.

The privileged tool of bargain-hunting Slovaks is the Internet, which lets them compare prices and hunt down discount sites. As a shopper tells the journal –

We go to the hairdressers, the beauticians or on holiday only with discount coupons. We buy tyres, renovate apartments or wash the windows through discount sites. That helps save a few hundred euros every year.

The idea of giving the European Commission the role of “watchdog” is simply “chutzpah”, believes Dutch political scientist Alfred Pijpers writing in De Volkskrant.

In early March, Germany, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands proposed that the EU be given new instruments to combat democratic drift as in Hungary. Debated on April 22 at the Council by the foreign ministers of the 27 meeting in Luxembourg, the proposal won majority backing. ”With the exception of the Czech minister, who expressed his reluctance, all the ministers asked the European Commission to work up the idea in the short term,” noted the paper on April 24.

Tools to steer weak democracies onto the right path are currently lacking, explains De Volkskrant –

The only weapon that the European Commission disposes of at present is the ultimate weapon: the suspension of the right to vote [in the Council] and the suspension of the flow of money to the state in question. As this 'nuclear option' is rejected throughout the Union, [the states] support less extensive measures [such as] recommendations of sanctions backed by progressive fines.

The political scientist believes that the crisis in the Eurozone is being abused to transfer more powers to the European level and a better step would be to contemplate expelling failing democracies from the EU.

The crisis in the eurozone is being exploited by overzealous political leaders and European commissioners to place all kinds of national organisations under Brussels’ supervision, as in the ever stronger budgetary surveillance across Europe [...] Instead of widespread monitoring, it would be better to try to eject the country that behaves badly from the EU, if necessary by a change in the [European] Treaty.

The May 2 UK local government elections saw a startling swing in support of the UK Independence Party (Ukip) – whose main policy platform is a pledge to remove Britain from the European Union – with the group polling around a quarter of the vote.

The sudden increase in backing was the largest surge in support for a fourth party in England since WWII and was variously dubbed “a sea change” and a “seismic event” in British politics. But The Observer’s columnist, Andrew Rawnsley, was decidedly less moved, urging such commentators to “take a cold shower and calm down”.

The results for the party, whose supporters UK Prime Minister David Cameron once described as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”, were “clearly noteworthy” he said, “but it is extremely premature to start jabbering that this is a historic turning point.”

The vote demonstrated some voters’ exasperation with Europe and others’ frustration at the entire political system, he continued, adding –

The big challenge for all the established parties is how to deal with the ‘anti-politics’ mood that Ukip is feeding off, the resentment felt by many voters that Britain is run in their own interests and those of their friends by a lookalike metropolitan elite who are all implicated in the economic mess. [...] Ukip may be inhabited by oddballs, the unsavoury and worse, but there is one sense in which the mainstream parties should be grateful to this particularly English way of protesting. Across Europe, austerity is fuelling a revolt against the political establishment that is manifesting itself in surges of support for the hard left or the far right – parties such as Marine Le Pen's Front National in France and the fascist Golden Dawn in Greece. We will have done well if Ukip is as ugly as it ever gets here.

A year to the day after his election to the French presidency, socialist leader François Hollande's approval rating now stands at 24 per cent, the lowest level ever reported for a president of the Fifth Republic at this stage in his term.

On May 5, the Left Party (PG), which supported Hollande’s election, organised a demonstration, which brought between 30,000 and 180,000 people onto the streets of Paris, to deplore “the failure” of the Socialist-Green government led by Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.

At the opening of the 14th Plenary Assembly of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) on May 5 in Budapest, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán insisted that there would be "zero tolerance" for antisemitism, at a time when a growing number of incidents targeting Hungary’s Jewish community have have been reported in recent months.

Israeli Energy Minister, Silvan Shalom, described Orbán’s speech as a “clear and strong message to the Hungarian Jewish community and to the extremists.” However, the response from the WJC was more critical. In particular it noted that the prime minister “did not allude to any specific racist or antisemitic incidents, nor did he clearly define the difference between the government and the far right fringe.”

On the day before the opening, 500 people took part in a demonstration organised by the far right party Jobbik to pay homage to the "victims of Zionism and Bolshevism" and to protest against "the Israeli plot against Hungary."

In an exclusive interview with the business daily, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble airs his views on the Brussels decision to allow Paris two more years in which to rein in its deficit to 3 per cent.

Pointing out that both “France and Germany have a special duty” with regard to Europe, he notes that the European Commission granted the extension on condition that there would be “a clear demonstration of commitment to necessary reforms.”

Schäuble also commented on the controversy triggered by an internal French Socialist Party document, which described Angela Markel as an “austerity chancellor” —

Instead of tackling the real causes of ongoing problems, some politicians prefer to hunt for scapegoats. It is a tendency that also exists in our country. But at the end of the day, what counts is what governments and peoples actually say. And both governments have clearly expressed the importance they attribute to Franco-German friendship.

Reporting on the “Germany's biggest ever neo-Nazi trial”, which opens on May 6 in Munich, Tageszeitung publishes a list of the 10 victims (nine immigrants and one German) of the far right terrorist group, National Socialist Underground (NSU), on its front page.

Five members of the group are charged with murder. The main defendant, 38-year-old Beate Zschäpe, the newspaper wonders: “Is she guilty? Did she organise the racist murders of nine people? Or did she [only] provide cover for the neo-Nazi trio [the two other members of the group, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt, committed suicide in 2011] without being aware of anything else?”

The daily continues —

The trial of the NSU is not comparable with the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals or the Auschwitz Trial […]: it is simply not on the same scale. But there is a common thread: even the name “National Socialist Underground” is clear evidence of the tradition that inspired the NSU. […] A full 18 months after the dismantling of the NSU, we still do not understand how a neo-Nazi terrorist group could have been left unhindered to conduct robberies, plant bombs and assassinate 10 people over a period of more than a decade in a country with a history of Nazi criminals.

“Mr Rajoy and the new Italian prime minister push for a European pact to promote growth,” writes the Catalan daily.

The new Italian PM, Enrico Letta, is today visiting Madrid as part of his European tour, after trips to Berlin, Paris and Brussels, in an effort to forge a strong front against Europe’s policy of austerity.

The visit comes ahead of Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy's Wednesday speech to the national parliament when he will outline the country’s new cost-cutting measures.

A man has died and 49 have been hospitalised after inhaling toxic fumes released when a train carrying chemicals derailed and caught fire in Wetteren, northwest Belgium, on May 4.

The exact causes of the accident are not known yet, although the train driver has admitted exceeding the speed limit on that part of the track.

A total of 250 people living within 500 metres of the crash site were immediately evacuated following the accident and people in nearby villages were told to remain indoors.

Some of the victims, and the dead man, were living beyond the security perimeter and are thought to have become sick after water used to douse the fire mixed with the toxic chemicals and washed into the drains. This has led to a polemic on the way the authorities managed the crisis.

The EU is to unveil a plan to compel all member countries to exchange investment income and capital gains details as part of a new push against tax avoidance.

In an interview with the Financial Times EU tax commissioner Algirdas Semeta said a new proposal would be announced within months which will would force member states’ tax authorities to share more information about the financial affairs of citizens, private equity partners and hedge funds.

Last month the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain agreed an automatic data sharing deal, but this move would broaden the scope to include countries such as Luxembourg and Ireland, home to many of Europe’s largest investment funds.

Croatia, which will officially join the EU on July 1, aims to be part of Schengen by 2015, reports Der Standard. However, the Austrian daily explains, inclusion in the free movement area, which will effectively make the country responsible for some of the EU’s external borders, still represents —

an equipment and manpower challenge for Croatia. According to the newspaper Novi List, an additional 750 police will have to be recruited. And the country will need more thermal cameras, helicopters, and specific vehicles for use on land and sea to protect Europe’s borders.

Although checkpoints on Croatia’s borders with, Italy, Slovenia and Hungary will remain in operation after the state joins the EU, Zagreb is eager to begin preparations to fulfill the criteria for Schengen membership, adds Der Standard. Croatia has also begun talks on conditions for common procedures with Slovenia and Hungary to facilitate tourist access to its territory.

Checks on EU citizens on the state’s borders with EU countries, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and in its ports and airports should be facilitated, explains Der Standard, which points out that two checkpoints on the border with Bosnia-Herzegovina were opened at the end of April — a measure that was one of the conditions for Croatia’s accession to the EU.

Irish President Michael Higgins is under fire following an interview with the Financial Times in which said that the EU was “hegemonic” and faces a “moral crisis” as much as an economic one. He also urged the European Central Bank to reform or risk social upheaval and a loss of popular legitimacy. He has attracted the ire of critics who say he has overstepped the constitutional limits of his office. But this should not lead Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny to reach “for his censor’s pencil”, writes the Irish Times:

In articulating the case for a social Europe and a rejection of orthodox neo-liberalism, perhaps the President, in his inimitable way, is straying beyond the ideological horizon of the government. [...] Mr Higgins, in pushing boundaries and urging that we develop a new vision of the EU and our place in it, is playing an essential role in stimulating, without deciding, a debate that is necessary and overdue.

The constitutionality of Higgins’ comments should be left to Ireland to debate, notes the Financial Times editorial. But “the issues he addressed are precisely those we should want elected politicians to grapple with publicly.” The economic daily continues –

Mr Higgins may think that the moral arguments stack up against austerity. But it also matters morally if borrowing today burdens future generations; and if public borrowing is spent on privileged insiders’ interests. He is, however, right that the debate must be had.

Across the world, celebrations have been planned to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) on May 5.

De Groene Amsterdammer reports that his focus on the existence of the individual, as well as awareness of oneself and one’s future have led to a significant resurgence of interest in the work of the “Socrates of Copenhagen”.

His essays on “the possibility of achieving authenticity through freedom have ensured that Kierkegaard is still very relevant [...] even though the mission that he confers on the individual is fundamentally different to the encouraging advice found in today’s self-help manuals.”

Bayern Munich President Uli Hoeneß should watch the Champions League final between his team and Borussia Dortmund, which is to be played in London on May 25, from prison, argues Tageszeitung.

Hoeneß’s confession that he had a Swiss bank account, has taken on an increasingly political dimension in Germany in the runup to the general election in September.

“Will Hoeneß’s admission that he is a sinful soul be enough to satisfy the court?” wonders the alternative daily, which also raises another question: the issue of Hoeneß’s resignation. The Bayern Munich President has declared that he does not want to step down before the big match.

When he was elected to the French presidency on May 6, 2012, François Hollande intended "to reorient European policy" away from the hard line on budgetary austerity advocated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But after a year, the results of his efforts "have failed to live up to his initial hopes,” argues Le Figaro. Not only did “the alliance which he tried to organise with southern countries to counter northern states prove to be ineffective,” but “relations with Berlin have never been so strained.”

The conservative daily notes that —

The voice of France is increasingly inaudible, however, the message about the dangers of excessive austerity has widely been heard, even in Brussels. [...] Perhaps François Hollande’s mistake was to be right too soon.

“The ECB cut its key interest rate from 0.75 per cent to five per cent,” on May 2, which as Die Presse points out, will bring interest rates “to a record low”. The newspaper adds that European Central Bank President Mario Draghi “has not ruled out further rate cuts” in the future.

The Viennese daily notes that the measure will be of benefit to Eurozone banks, which, “for at least a year, will be able to borrow as much as they want from the ECB under very favourable terms.”

But savers will be the losers, argues the newspaper —

The historic low in interest rates will have catastrophic consequences. Taking into account inflation and taxes […] savers are making a loss. Negative real interest rates caused Austrian savers to lose €10bn between 2010 and 2012.

The Mayor of Athens, Giorgos Kaminis, on May 2 banned a food distribution operation organised by the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, which offers help exclusively for Greeks.

Furious at the decision, Golden Dawn MP Yorgos Germenis "brandished a firearm", reports the daily, adding that the politician attempted to strike the mayor but instead injured a child. Police used teargas to disperse neo-Nazi activists.

It is the first time that authorities have outlawed what the newspaper describes as the “soup kitchen of hatred.” The daily wonders if the move represents a real change in the government’s attitude or if the power struggle with Golden Dawn has been motivated by the prospect of 2014 municipal elections.

Marking World Press Freedom day on May 3, the Turin daily is publishing a special edition dominated by a photo of its war correspondent Domenico Quirico, who has been missing in Syria for 3 weeks, and the yellow ribbon symbolising the campaign for his release.

“An international effort to make the the regimes limiting press freedom feel the pressure of public opinion may make a difference,” writes editor in chief Mario Calabresi in his editorial.

In a guest column, Reporters sans frontiéres Secretary General Christophe Deloire celebrates “our heroes”, the journalists who risk their freedom and life to “defend our right to keep our eyes open.” Among them is Mazen Darwish, the jailed head of the Syrian media centre who was awarded the organisation’s press freedom prize in 2012.

European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi, announced on May 2 that the ECB’s key interest rate is to be cut from 0.75 per cent to the historic low of 0.5 per cent. However, this measure "will not be enough to generate growth in Spain," argues El Periódico.

The daily believes that the lower rate is a "necessary stimulus" but complains that it will not “facilitate access to credit for small and medium enterprises," which is vitally important for economic recovery.

The ECB also announced that it would continue to provide unlimited finance for banks until July 2014.

It was a “debut with no inferiority complex,” writes La Stampa after Enrico Letta’s first European diplomatic tour. The Italian Prime minister, sworn in on April 29, met German Chancellor Angela Merkel on April 30 then French President François Hollande and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso on May 1.

He had to “make himself known in Berlin and Paris, where Italian destiny is decided much more than some think”. Despite his young age – only 46 – he “put on the shoes of a chief of government in a few hours”, notes the daily. But Europe’s confidence will prove much harder to win, adds the daily in an editorial

Letta’s early diplomatic tour was “a good idea”, estimates Il Sole 24 Ore, not only to underline “Italy’s more political stance on the continental stage,” but also to consolidate his position in the face of the disputes – namely on the refund of the housing tax asked for by PDL leader Silvio Berlusconi – that are already shaking the grand coalition supporting his government. The newspaper continues that Letta

From the German side, Die Zeit reflects on the "smart boy" who has succeeded the “smiling charmer" Berlusconi and the "courteous professor" Monti.

As for the idea of an alliance with France’s François Hollande in order to "seek a relaxation of the stability pact and [...] deficit targets," Der Standard finds this "completely exaggerated." The Austrian daily says that

Enrico Letta’s European trip, in the end, amounts to no more than a “pious pilgrimage”, considers ABC’s columnist Alfonso Rojo. Visiting Berlin first, the new Italian PM simply showed he knows who is in charge in the EU –

“The EU has always had problems defining its outermost boundaries. Now, the problem is being resolved by candidate states themselves: most of them are abandoning their integration dreams,” writes Rzeczpospolita columnist Jędrzej Bielecki. The daily notes that in addition to the growing Euroscepticism in the richer countries, such as Iceland, which does not want to continue accession negotiations, enthusiasm for integration is now also faltering among poorer candidates, such as the Ukraine, which – despite all the encouragement from Poland, cannot make up its mind whether it wants to get closer to the EU or not.

Also, public opinion in Turkey is turning against the country’s EU membership, while Croatia is likely to be the last newcomer from the Balkans in the years to come, as other candidates from the region appear to feel EU membership does not justify the pain that accession reforms would inflict.

According to the Warsaw daily –

This is the outcome of five years of crisis during which EU leaders haven’t been able to take the bold decisions needed to restore the euro’s stability. At the same time, the weakness of France, Italy, and Spain has led to the political dominance of Germany in the united Europe and a revival of historic resentments. The Eurozone crisis has not only occurred due to swindling by the Greek authorities or imprudent investments by Spanish banks, but also due to errors in the structure of the monetary union created by the Germans and the French. But today only the weakest countries of Europe are supposed to pay for the failure of euro. And this gives candidate states something to think about too.

Yulia Tymoshenko was arrested unlawfully and for political reasons, according to the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on April 30.

Tymoshenko was detained in 2011 and jailed for seven years for “abuse of office” in relation to her role in signing a gas deal with Russia. According to Gazeta Wyborcza, “the unprecedented ruling of the Strasbourg judges, who previously avoided taking such an explicit position in political disputes, leaves Kiev with little room for manoeuvre.

Leaving Tymoshenko in jail will destroy the Ukraine’s hopes of signing an EU association agreement that has been initially scheduled for the autumn in Vilinius”.

The retirement age will no longer be set at 65 and in future will depend on the sustainability of the social security system under new plans to be discussed on May 2 at a meeting of Portuguese government ministers.

Pedro Passos Coelho’s government has pledged to the EU-IMF-ECB troika that it will cut €4.7bn from public spending between 2014 and 2016. It is expected to adopt a set of sweeping measures to reduce the deficit to 5.5 per cent of GDP this year, 4 per cent in 2014 and 2.5 per cent the following year.

The state is preparing to cut 20,000 civil service jobs over the next three years. Part of the overall public spending cuts in 2014 will include a €1.3bn cut from social security benefits, including pensions.

At meeting in Bratislava on May 2, the governing council of the European Central Bank is expected to cut the ECB’s key interest rate, from 0.75 per cent to 0.5 per cent or less.

The decision, which has already been welcomed by the markets, "is more of a political compromise than a life-saving initiative for the European economy," argues La Tribune. "It speaks volumes about the difficult situation of the ECB, which has to contend with the conflicting imperatives of the economic situation and German demands."

On April 25, Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that “higher interest rates might be needed in Germany, but other countries needed lower ones."

There will be no tributes paid to German soldiers during the Dutch national remembrance day on May 4, which commemorates Dutch citizens who died during the Second World War and in peace missions since 1945.

The national committee clarified its position to avoid confusion after a storm of protest during last year’s celebrations when it emerged that a 15-year old boy was due to recite a poem about his great-uncle, a member of the Nazi SS. After much debate, the committee banned the poem, recalls Trouw.

The daily also dedicates its frontpage to the re-opening of the renovated Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, on May 1.

Youth unemployment is still rising in Belgium, according to the latest Eurostat figures, which show that 22.4 per cent of people under 25 do not have a job.

What is “eye-catching”, notes De Morgen, is that “the biggest rise is for the group with secondary and higher education level qualifications. Higher education is no longer a guarantee of a job.”

In Flanders, the average increase in the rate of unemployment is now 8 per cent, but among people holding university degrees, it is 12.8 per cent.

Pressure from the Eurosceptic Ukip may push Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron to give British MPs a vote on an in-out referendum ahead of 2017, the year he has pledged to put the decision before the nation.

If MPs voted in favour of holding a referendum, this would commit the government to the controversial poll on the UK’s European Union membership. The PM hinted at the new plan as the country votes today in a series of county council elections.

“Mr Cameron has always held back from giving MPs a pre-election vote on his proposed referendum. It would split the coalition while enraging pro-European Tories. But his willingness to entertain the idea is an indication of the pressure from Nigel Farage’s Eurosceptic party and large numbers of his own MPs,” writes The Times.

On April 29, the Northern Ireland Assembly opted to reject same-sex marriage legislation, which was voted down by the Protestant conservative Ulster Unionist Party with encouragement from religious leaders.

"Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK without marriage rights for gay couples," points out the daily.

Same-sex marriage was approved by England and Wales on February 5, 2013, and a bill to introduce the legislation is making progress in the Scottish Parliament.

On April 29, Italy’s new coalition government, headed by Enrico Letta (Democratic Party), was approved by the lower house of the parliament with 453 votes against 153 and is also expected to receive approval from the senate on April 30.

In his speech to MPs, Letta revealed some of the basic points of his program: cutting labour costs and reducing the housing tax (IMU), as requested by his coalition partners in the People of Freedom party, as well as abolishing public funding to parties. He gave himself 18 months to start the reforms.

After the senate vote, Letta will embark on a series of diplomatic visits to Brussels, Berlin and Paris in hopes of reassuring Italy’s European partners, but also to request a looser interpretation of the stability pact for his country.

On April 30, the Cypriot parliament is expected to approve by a narrow majority the memorandum signed with the EU-ECB-IMF troika of international creditors and the corresponding agreement for €10bn which will “pave the way for the transfer of [financial] aid” in the coming days.

Only the Democratic Rally led by Nicos Anastasiades, the Democratic Party and the European Party, which control 29 to 30 of the 56 seats in parliament, are expected to vote in favour of the text.

Now that the Communist Party-supported possibility of an exit from the eurozone has been set aside, the troika agreement “is the only remaining option for Cyprus,” notes the daily.

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić’s April 29 visit to Zagreb has marked a thaw in Serbian-Croatian relations, which had been deadlocked in the wake of the election of nationalist Tomislav Nikolić as President of Serbia.

Vučić believes that following Croatia’s accession to the EU, cooperation between the two countries will be reinforced, reports Danas.

For his part, Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusić announced that both countries are planning to take part in talks on the withdrawal of genocide proceedings relating to the 1991-95 war, which have been filed with the International Court of Justice by the two states.

“The honeymoon is over. Franco-German relations have been cooled by the euro crisis,” remarks the business daily.

“In the wake of the harsh criticism of the German Chancellor leveled by France's Socialists, both governments attempted to limit the damage,” writes Handelsblatt. However, “now Angela Merkel’s second-in-command has poured petrol on the flames”: Finance Minister Philip Rösler recently authored a report, obtained by the newspaper, which “enumerates the economic and political weaknesses” of Germany’s neighbour.

In particular, it singles out “the increasing cost of labour and high payroll taxes,” the "shortest working hours in the EU”, and “the highest tax and social welfare burden in the eurozone.”

According to Rösler, French competitiveness is in decline and industries, struggling under the weight of taxes, are leaving the country, explains Handelsblatt. "France is drifting south," argues the minister, who believes that the country can no longer play a stabilising role in the euro crisis.

On the day of the abdication of Queen Beatrix and the accession to the throne of her son Willem-Alexander, 46, the newspaper enumerates “seven reasons to celebrate” a monarchy that is so often the target of criticism.

In its list, the daily includes the competence of the future king, the fact that since last year he has avoided any involvement in politics, the “glamour” of royalty when compared with a simple president, the king’s role in representing the country in international trade visits, and the “national cohesion” he inspires.

On April 30, three days after general elections, Icelandic president Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson will appoint a prime minister charged with the task of forming of a new government.

The two likely choices are Bjarni Benediktsson, 43, head of the Independence Party, which obtained 26.7 per cent of the vote and 19 of the 63 seats in Iceland's parliament, the Alþingi, and Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, 38, leader of the Progressive Party, which also obtained 19 seats, but with the lesser score of 24.43 per cent. Nonetheless, Gunnlaugsson has laid claim to the post on the ground that support for his party has more than doubled since general elections were last held in 2009.

In any case, the two parties are expected to form a coalition, as they did in the 1990s and the 2000s.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has fired Justice Minister Jarosław Gowin after just a year and a half in the role. “I don’t have time to explain the minister away every week”, said Tusk, stressing that Gowin, who comes from the same Civic Platform (PO) party, unnecessarily “politicised” issues under his care and expressed opinions that were “troublesome” for the cabinet.

Rzeczpospolita notes that Gowin lost his post after accusing IVF clinics of trading with human embryos and even selling them to Germany where they were allegedly used for experiments.

Gowin will be replaced by Marek Biernacki (PO), a former interior affairs minister in the government of Jerzy Buzek.

It appears the corruption scandal that cost Maltese politician John Dalli his job as European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy is beginning to backfire on the European Anti-fraud Office (OLAF), which investigated the case.

The Times of Malta reports that the investigation has been called into question by OLAF’s supervisory committee. In a report currently “stored in a vault of the European Parliament,” which was briefly seen by the daily, the members of the committee take the view that OLAF operatives “acted illegally when they interrogated [Dalli’s associate and businessman] Silvio Zammit.” They also argue that OLAF went “beyond its remit”, for example, when it “asked Maltese authorities for the suspects’ telephone records.”

This last observation is important, because, as the daily remarks on the front page of its April 29 edition, the existence of “phone calls coinciding with key events under investigation” is a key aspect of OLAF’s case. The “unambiguous circumstantial evidence” for allegations that Dalli was involved in influence trafficking hinges on a series of calls between Dalli, Zammit and his associate Gayle Kimberley “before, after or on the same day as the events took place,” as well as “inconsistencies between what Mr Dalli told investigators and the facts they uncovered.”

Dalli was forced to resign last October, when OLAF discovered Zammit had offered to intervene with the commissioner on behalf of a Swedish tobacco manufacturer in exchange for a vast sum of money.

However, according to the Times of Malta, the OLAF investigative report, part of which was published by MaltaToday on April 28,

does not include conclusive evidence proving that the former European Commissioner knew about the bribe requests allegedly made to tobacco lobbyists.

Tensions between France and Germany rose yet another notch on Friday, after months of clashing over which policies to adopt in order to end the economic crisis. The most recent conflict concerns a leaked draft of an internal document of France’s ruling Socialist Party, intended for discussion at a party conference.

The draft document rails against German Chancellor Angela Merkel's "selfish intransigence". Although a more watered down tone features in the final document to be adopted on April 30, this is a far cry from the "friendly quibbles" previously mentioned by French President François Hollande.

The point of view expressed in the draft is criticised by French conservative daily Le Figaro, which argues in a leader article that:

nothing could be more irresponsible than turning Angela Merkel and Germany's European policies into a scapegoat for the troubles brewing in our country. This strategy, maintained at the highest level in Paris, is part of a petty Machiavellian plot to make the German Chancellor lose the legislative elections [scheduled for September 22] so that Germany will be forced to abandon its calls for austerity and satisfy the demands of a southern Europe unable to reform itself.

For French daily Le Monde, "this little game is not only infantile, it is extremely dangerous" for several reasons:

First, because putting the blame for France's political and economic problems on the European Union feeds Euroscepticism. [...] Secondly, because if Ms Merkel remains impassive to the personal attacks of which she is the target in southern Europe, it is a whole other story when the attack comes from Paris.

On the German side of the Rhine, weekly Der Spiegel says that the discord between France and Germany hampers efforts to end the crisis:

François Hollande is placing his hopes in there being a new government after the German legislative elections, one that would be more ready and willing to make some compromises. He has no more expectations from the current government. A year after Hollande took office, the Franco-German relationship is in even worse shape than expected by the most pessimistic observers in each country. Berlin and Paris are in disagreement on nearly every policy for exiting the crisis.

Tomorrow, 46-year-old Willem Alexander is set to take over the throne of the Netherlands from his mother, Queen Beatrix.

For Belgians, the succession of the Prince of Orange could amount to "a dress rehearsal" in the light of rumours that, "over the last few months, have predicted that Albert II will abdicate in favour of his son Philippe." Commentators have remarked that the king appears tired and that "the prince is eager to rein." However, for the Belgian daily,

the prospect of a political cataclysm in the aftermath of general elections on May 25, 2014, will further complicate a takeover which has already been called into question, notably with regard to Prince Philippe’s capacity to take on the duties of King of Belgium.

At the same time, the differences between the two countries "have added to the complexity of comparing the two successions".

In April 28 regional parliamentary elections, the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) maintained its position as the leading party in the Austrian state, with 39.6 per cent of the vote. However, the outcome was the worst ever score for the party in the Tyrol.

The socialists of the SPÖ, who were placed second with 13.8 per cent, will also have to contend with a decline in support, which saw them post their worst ever result in the state.

They were nonetheless ahead of the Greens (12.1 per cent) and “Forward Tyrol” — a party created by ÖVP dissidents, which scored 9.3 per cent. The far right FPÖ obtained 9.6 per cent, a decline of 2.8 per cent compared with its performance in 2008.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy "will not change anything: neither the government or its economic strategy," remarks El Mundo, in the wake of meetings Granada and in Ireland, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency.

The announcement has come only a few days after the publication of Spain's latest unemployment figures, which now shows more than 6 million people are without work (the equivalent of 27.19 per cent of the workforce), and against a backdrop of economic austerity demanded by EU authorities.

However, “'patience' should be based on expectations,” complains the daily, adding that no expectations are possible "in the absence of any effort to implement indispensable structural reforms, and in an ongoing situation that is leading to disaster."

April 27's general elections concluded with the defeat of Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir’s social-democratic government and the return to power of the centre right. With 26.7 per cent of the vote, Bjarni Benediktsson's Independence Party won 19 of the 63 seats in the country’s parliament, the Alþingi. It was closely followed by the Progressive Party led by Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson (24.43 per cent), which also took 19 seats.

Having scored 12.9 per cent, the Social Democratic Alliance won nine seats, while the Pirate Party (5.1 per cent) obtained three seats, becoming the first ever party of its kind to enter the national parliament.

The Independence Party and the Progressive Party have begun discussions on the formation of a government, which Benediktsson, 43, is expected to lead. However, Gunnlaugsson has also claimed that he should be appointed prime minister, because his party gained more ground in the vote, explains Fréttablaðið.

According to rival daily Morgunblaðið, both parties

are sceptical about the European integration process and the election results could hamper Iceland’s accession to the EU.

Ahead of the 70th anniversary of the Wołyń massacre, priests of the Ukrainian Church Council are calling on Poles and Ukrainians to once again express forgiveness for “a chain of evil that goes back several hundred years”.

In 1943-1944, Ukrainian nationalists killed up to 100,000 Poles in Wołyń, which before WWII belonged to Poland. As many as 20,000 Ukrainians are estimated to have died in Polish retaliatory attacks.

Gazeta Wyborcza notes that

this unprecedented appeal […] has the potential to cool tensions ahead of July’s anniversary, which always proves to be a difficult test for Polish-Ukrainian relations.

As Italy’s new government was being sworn in at the Quirinale presidential palace in Rome on the morning of April 28, a man opened fire near the main entrance of Palazzo Chigi, the site of cabinet meetings, injuring two policemen, one of them seriously, and a woman bystander.

Luigi Preiti, 49, who had recently lost his job and separated from his wife, tried to flee but was immediately captured. He said he had been thinking for some time of “killing some politicians, then killing myself”, but had reportedly run out of ammunition.

The 21 ministers headed by Democratic Party (PD) caretaker Enrico Letta were not informed of the attack, and were sworn into office by the usual procedure. The coalition government supported by PD, Berlusconi’s People of Freedom and Civic Choice will face a confidence vote in parliament on Monday afternoon.

The scars are still far from healed, but Gazeta Wyborcza has aptly summed up what we’re seeing these days, namely “an end to the 24-year war in the Balkans”.

On 19 April, 15 years after the NATO intervention and following months of EU-brokered talks, Serbia and Kosovo signed a treaty to normalize their relations. A gesture quite rightly hailed as historic, even if it does not mean official recognition of Pristina by Belgrade and even if the implementation of the autonomy granted to the Serb-majority areas is bound to prove difficult.

Less than a week after that, the Serb president made a symbolic gesture, this time toward his Bosnian neighbours. Tomislav Nikolić is not going to leave behind an image as powerful as that of German Chancellor Willy Brandt kneeling before the memorial to the heroes of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. But asking forgiveness “on his knees” for “the crimes of Srebrenica”, he acknowledged Serb responsibility for the 1995 genocide and paved the way for a dialogue, which will likewise be anything but easy.

These two events have one thing in common: the desire to turn the page on the wars in ex-Yugoslavia and to take the path towards joining the European Union. In this period of crisis for the European project, the western Balkan nations are showing us that the European Union retains a bit of its “soft power”, its force of attraction, which enables it to stabilize and democratize its nearby neighbours.

But this desire for Europe on the part of the Serbs (who’d have thought Nikolić the nationalist and his Prime Minister Ivica Dačić, ex-spokesman for Slobodan Milošević, would take these two steps?), Kosovars and, in the longer term, Bosnians might turn out to be a dangerous liaison for the EU. For it opens up two possibilities, between which a narrow middle way will have to be found.

Responding positively to these goodwill gestures and admitting Serbia (the most advanced of the three countries) within the next few years would be running the risk of an overly hasty and ill-prepared enlargement. This new member’s economy, state structures, justice system, and more generally its political practices would still be too far removed from the optimum European norms. And it would end up being rejected by public opinion in the EU and causing disillusionment in Serbia itself.

On the other hand, taking into account Serbia’s need to catch up in these domains and pushing back its accession prospects would run the risk of halting the reformist and democratic momentum of its leaders and of its society as a whole.

In other words, Serbia and its neighbours have been making concrete encouraging signs over the past few days, so the EU is going to have to hold out prospects of accession, even while setting certain limits – an exercise in political geometry at which it has always been inept. The example of Cyprus’s accession, which was supposed to help resolve the problem of Turkish occupation of half the island, and that of the erratic talks with Turkey are past cases in point. Especially since the western Balkans, and this is nearly a cliché by now, remain a powder keg.

Croatian accession, slated for 1 July, is not a coincidence. No doubt it will push the leaders in Belgrade towards efforts to avoid being relegated to the group of small Balkan states without accession prospects. But it should be an opportunity, as political scientist Jean-Sylvestre Mongrenier recently pointed out, “to place the rule of law at the centre of enlargement policy” – so as to better prepare the welcome for future newcomers and avoid disenchantment the morning after.

The 2012 Activity Report of the OLAF Supervisory Committee has added to “doubts about the work of the European Anti-fraud Office,” remarks Die Presse —

Normally there should be no doubts. […] But the forced resignation of European Commissioner, John Dalli last October, in which OLAF played a major role, has reinforced the impression that it makes use of dubious methods.”

For the Viennese daily, the report presents an image of an organisation “which is feverishly trying to avoid external scrutiny […]. The entirety of OLAF, along with its director-general Giovanni Kessler, are responsible”. On its website, OLAF deplores what it terms “attempts at misinformation,” which aim “to give a false impression of issues relating to the investigation” of John Dalli.

In an interview broadcast by national television in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić apologised for the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

“It was a horrible crime perpetrated by members of my people. And I want them all to be punished," declared the head of state, who sparked controversy in 2012, when he claimed that there had been no genocide in Srebrenica.

Approximately 8,000 men in the Muslim enclave, which had been placed under UN protection, were killed by Bosnian-Serb forces — a massacre that has been recognised as genocide by the United Nations.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel reopened the divisive issue of bank interest rate policy by saying that Germany would ideally need higher rates than would suit southern Europe, reports the Financial Times.

“The German chancellor’s highly unusual intervention on Thursday, a week before many economists expect the independent European Central Bank [ECB] to cut its main interest rate, highlights how the economies of the prosperous north and austerity-hit south remain far apart,” writes the economic daily.

Her comments came as new jobless figures showing Spain has more than 6 million people out of work, while France has a new high of 3.2 million, underlining the challenge facing the ECB in setting an interest rate to suit the different economic situations of countries in the EU.

According to figures published on April 25 by the Spanish National Statistics Institute, there were 6.2 million unemployed (the equivalent of 27.19 percent of the workforce) in the country in the first quarter of 2013.

This is "a tragic record," reports an alarmed Cinco Días, which points out that in certain regions like Extremadura or Andalusia, the rate of unemployment has exceeded 35 per cent: "a national emergency demanding maximum attention."

Mariano Rajoy’s centre-right government will to present a package of measures on April 26, which includes: an increase in payroll taxes to boost state revenues, facilities to assist in the creation of companies, funding for SMEs, and a plan to modernise and reform public administration.

"It is useless to win or lose elections," if you keep the mood of unease, President Aníbal Cavaco Silva said during his speech to mark the official celebrations for the April 25 revolution.

On the 39th anniversary of the revolution, the president said that "ongoing conflict and the absence of consensus will penalise political players themselves." He also acknowledged that the troika’s (EU-IMF-ECB) bailout programme "has led to serious consequences" for the Portuguese but meant "positive results" for the banking system and the country’s balance of payments.

Several thousand people took to the streets shouting slogans such as "IMF, get out of here" and railing against the president's speech, while opposition political parties accused the president of “patronising” the government.

The number of jobless reached 3.224 million in March, the equivalent of 10.2 per cent of the workforce. Unemployment has increased by 11.5 per cent in a year exceeding the record set in 1997.

"Moreover, although it cannot admit it, the government does not really believe in the presidential cant about a reduction in unemployment this year," notes Le Figaro. In its editorial, the conservative daily calls for "major resources" to combat unemployment [...] even if that means going against accepted socialist doctrine": a drastic cut in labour costs, an end to the 35-hour week, and a major overhaul of unemployment benefits.

These are "measures […] that the most solid European countries implemented ages ago," points out the newspaper.

The fourth issue of Europa, the supplement jointly produced by Gazeta Wyborcza, The Guardian, Le Monde, El País, La Stampa and Süddeutsche Zeitung, focuses on the dwindling public confidence in the European Union, which, as the latest Eurobarometer has revealed, is now at a record low. Euroscepticism, writes Parisian daily Le Monde —

in its multiple forms of populism, nationalism, distrust, resentment and revolt has spread across Europe. For many years, it was a British speciality. However, it has now emerged as the source of the Greek revolt, Italian political chaos, French disappointment, and German frustration at being the focus of so much hostility.

A sentiment that is shared by La Stampa director Mario Calabresi who points out —

… we are at a standstill, without a strong idea capable of restoring hope, and even more divided than ever. […] The crisis in the construction of Europe and our increasingly insular focus on our own societies and our social models has revived the selfishness and the enmities of the past. The doctrine of austerity may have failed to win hearts and minds, but it has brought with it a coldness that has added to the distance between peoples.

In El País researchers Mark Leonard and José Ignacio Torreblanca of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) argue that this state of affairs is largely due —

to the Fiscal Compact and far reaching national reforms demanded by the European Central Bank, which have led eurocrats to cross the line on national sovereignty and — going well beyond their brief for food safety — to extend their influence to pensions, income taxes, wages, the labour market and civil service jobs. All of these fields touch at the heart of the welfare state and national identities. […] In this new scenario, governments come and go, but policies, which remain fundamentally the same, are not called into question.

Will this trend result in the end of the Union? “Everyone is hoping that with a return to growth, Euroscepticism will finally abate,” write Leonard and Torreblanca. However, they also warn —

that enthusiasm [for Europe] will not be reborn without a radical overhaul of its behaviour towards member states and citizens.

This "shock of democracies" and this north-south opposition are the de-facto embodiement of the two-speed Europe that used to be mentioned in connection with defence, external affairs and free movement policies, notes the Spanish daily’s deputy editor, Berna González-Harbour. She continues —

… the tragedy is that we are no longer able to keep Europe moving peacefully along two parallel tracks, which, even if they never join, do not cut across each other. Today the two tracks are clearly divergent and inevitably oriented towards disagreement.

In the meantime, the six press titles in the Europa partnership have come up with an number of ideas to break the deadlock in the EU, which are summarised by The Guardian. They range from the abolition of the Strasbourg shuttle between the two seats of the European Parliament, to the creation of a European army, or the development of a “Eur-app” to broadcast the case for Europe on tablet computers and smartphones: “a leading idea that could provide Europeans with symbols and aims evoking emotions, attachment and solidarity.”

Switzerland decided on April 24 to extend, for a year, its quota system on long-term work permits to all citizens of the European Union (with the exception of Romanians and Bulgarians who are already subjected to a transition period). The measure is scheduled to come into force on May 1. It follows quotas on short-term work permits imposed in April 2012 on the so-called EU-8, citizens of Eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004.

"The EU regrets" this decision, runs a headline in Swiss daily Neue Züricher Zeitung. By extending the restrictions to the so-called EU-17, Bern is ensuring the application of "the safeguard clause" provided for in the bilateral treaties signed with the Union in 1999. This safeguard clause caps the delivery of work permits at 53,700. Yet, notes the newspaper –

If the Federal Council [Swiss government] hoped to escape criticism for discrimination in applying the clause to the 17 other European Countries, this failed to convince Ms Ashton [the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs]. According to her, [Switzerland] continues to discriminate between member states, which is intolerable.

Meanwhile, Swiss daily Le Temps reckons that this measure "does not ruffle the EU's feathers". Yet, the paper calls the move "migratory cosmetics," which may reassure Brussels, but not the Swiss people –

This decision can be sold to Brussels for three reasons. Switzerland respects its contract with the EU. The system avoids discrimination between Europeans. It applies only to long-term permits, which reduces its impact. [...] To think that the Swiss can be thus reassured seems quite naïve. Because they are not stupid, they will see that the migratory pressure from Europe will not be truly reduced. [...] The Swiss can understand, as they have already shown, that European immigration – which is favoured with good reason over that from the rest of the world – makes the country more prosperous.

European External Action Service (EEAS) boss Catherine Ashton has failed. The EU has not spoken with a single voice on any key foreign affairs issue in recent years. This is the conclusion of a draft report by the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, which reviews the organisation and functioning of the EEAS, which was set up in December 2010.

“We’ve made one step forward, while we expected many more steps,” the committee's head, Elmar Brok, told Rzeczpospolita. Brok believes that EEAS has not adequately used the mechanism for enhanced cooperation written into the Treaty of Lisbon, which

makes it possible to agree upon operations by a selected group of countries as part of a single policy of the entire EU. Unfortunately, this solution has never been used even though it would be a perfect fit, eg for the intervention in Libya.

Brok says EEAS failure stems from a lack of unanimity on foreign affairs in the EU Council plus Ashton’s lack of broader vision or ability to set the foreign affairs agenda. Rzeczpospolita notes that in the eyes of the committee, the EEAS’s lack of real clout lies the institution’s faulty structure with lots of criss-crossing competencies that slow down the decision-making process.

The report does however acknowledge some achievements on the part of the EEAS, most notably when it fostered an agreement on the normalisation of relations between Serbia and Kosovo, and proved a good negotiator with regard to Iranian nuclear weapons programme.

The German Constitutional Court decided on April 23 to impose a strict separation between the work of the police and intelligence services.

For the Karlsruhe based court, the exchange of data between the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, intelligence services, military counter-intelligence and the police amounts to —

a severe infringement of the rights of those concerned, which is why it can only be allowed in exceptional cases.

The judges did, however, authorise an “anti-terrorist” listing, while declaring another “secret service contact” listing unconstitutional. Initiated in 2006, the second database contains information on 18,000 potential terrorists, supplied by 38 intelligence services.

“The Russian military has once again taken Sweden by surprise,” writes Svenska Dagbladet, which reports on another apparent incursion into its airspace, in the wake of a previous incident at the end of March.

According to the daily, on April 20, a Russian spyplane, which most probably took off from the Kaliningrad exclave, conducted a mission in the narrow strip of international airspace over the Swedish Baltic Sea islands of Öland and Gotland, “at a time when Sweden was conducting a major military exercise,” which involved 1,400 troops within the NATO framework.

On April 25, the Swedish parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committee is to meet with chiefs of staff to discuss this latest episode, which once again highlighted their failure to provide a sufficiently rapid response.

In a recent radio interview, Spanish Supreme Court President Gonzalo Moliner has said that “‘escraches’, or demonstrations to shame officials that are often held outside their homes, constitute a legitimate example of the freedom to demonstrate, provided they are not violent, which they are not.”

The protest technique is increasingly used by groups campaigning against the eviction of families that are unable to repay their mortgages. Spain's judges, who are mainly opposed to evictions, are divided on the issue of the legality of the protests, which can be viewed as a violation of the right to privacy.

The Supreme Court President’s remarks have spread like “political wildfire in an atmosphere that was already strained,” notes El Mundo, which wonders in its editorial how this kind of coercion can be considered legitimate.

The European car market is weak and the outlook for 2014 is poor, points out La Tribune.

The quarterly figures reported by carmakers are cause for concern: the automobiles division of PSA (Peugeot-Citroën) saw sales decline by 10.3 per cent, Daimler announced a 60 per cent drop in profits, while Volkswagen reported a slight reduction in sales volume.

Meanwhile, American carmaker Ford tripled its European deficit, with a €350m loss and a 7 per cent decline in sales.

On the 39th anniversary of the Portuguese revolution, which brought to an end a dictatorship government that ruled the country for 41 years, demonstrations are planned against the government’s austerity policy.

Several key figures have announced they will be absent from the the traditional solemn parliamentary session to mark the event, including former president Mário Soares and poet Manuel Alegre, whose song Trova do vento que passa will launch the ceremony.

This non-attendance is a consequence of the fact that "political leadership is at odds with the spirit of the April 25 [revolution], its ideals and its values," the left-wing daily explains.

Caretaker leader of the Democratic Party (PD) Enrico Letta, 46, was given a mandate from President Giorgio Napolitano on April 24 to form a government and immediately started talks with the centrist Civic Choice (Scelta civica) and Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PDL) party.

Negotiations have already hit stumbling blocks. The PDL wants its senior figures in key departments, such as the interior and education ministries, while the PD prefers non-party figures.

The crucial economic ministry should be headed by Bank of Italy chairman Fabrizio Saccomanni.

Another obstacle is Berlusconi’s resolve to cancel the highly unpopular housing tax, set up by outgoing PM Mario Monti, and refund what has been paid so far, a move that the PD say would precipitate another financial emergency. Letta is expected to face a confidence vote on Monday.

“The government will increase spending as it will raise more money thanks to lower interest rates,” writes Hospodářské Noviny, noting that Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek has put his words into action – no further austerity measures are expected.

As Czech PM Petr Nečas declared: “We are fine with the fact that the public deficit will not exceed 3 per cent of GDP, and that alongside fiscal consolidation, we will be able to prepare the ground for growth.”

A petition signed by 80 European film-makers demanding that Brussels exclude audiovisual media from negotiations on a free trade agreement between the EU and the US was sent to the European Commission on April 22. Treaty talks are scheduled to begin this summer.

The film-makers hope – Belgian and French in the lead – to defend the "cultural exception" which allows restricting the free trade of culture on the market and allows each country to promote its own works.

The Commission "is accused by the cinema world of having a simply 'free trade' view of culture," notes French financial daily Les Echos, adding that for the film-makers, "culture should be a source [of unity] for the Union at a time when political Europe is 'ailing.'"

The accusation triggered a sharp reaction from Brussels with European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht promising in a press release that "the cultural exception will not be negotiated". His spokesperson explained that this does not exclude audiovisual media from the negotiations.

Les Echos notes that this is not the first time the world of cinema has risen up –

In 1993, during the renegotiations of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) accords, the predecessor to the World Trade Organisation, film-makers did not hesitate to hire an airplane to fly to Brussels to argue their point against the US onslaught, which wanted to assimilate culture to a packaged good just like any other. Twenty years later, they are ready to repeat the operation.

A new report published on April 23 by the UK Treasury on what currency Scotland would use should Scots choose to separate from the rest of Britain in the forthcoming independence referendum “marks the start of a new skirmish on one of the most important policy battlegrounds over which next year's historic referendum will be fought,” writes the Financial Times.

The report said that if Scotland chose independence, it would then have to choose between joining the euro, launching its own currency or keeping the pound – the favoured option for the governing pro-independence Scottish National Party. The FT continues –

The Scottish government wants to stick with the pound, arguing that monetary union would promote stability for businesses and the economies on both sides of the border. But George Osborne, chancellor of the exchequer, has suggested the UK would not want a euro-style monetary union with a foreign government – even if the state was Scotland. [...] If the pound continued to be used in Scotland, [Scottish First Minister Alex] Salmond would find his ability to tax and spend severely curtailed. The Bank of England would rightly demand significant fiscal and regulatory control as the price for taking on risk as lender of last resort.

For The Herald’s columnist, Ian Bell, “the argument over the currency that might be used in an independent Scotland is essentially political, not economic.” He writes –

Choose independence and hope for a formal currency union, says Mr Osborne, and we will demand control over the essentials of your economy. In fact, we will demand more control than the Germans exert over the Eurozone. [...] In some circles, it's known as a threat.

“For the first time in history,” reports the newspaper, the Spanish royal family’s accounts will be made public following the coming into force of new transparency law. Currently under examination in in parliament, the law will make it possible to see how the funds attributed to King Juan Carlos I, the members of his family, and the royal household, the institution that manages the royal family's affairs, are sourced and utilised.

Until now, the royal household presented a summary of its expenses, but was not obliged to justify the manner in which funds were used.

President Nicolae Timofti appointed Deputy Prime Minister Iurie Leancă, of the Liberal Democrat Party (PLDM) to lead the government on April 23, following the Constitutional Court’s decision to invalidate his previous decree to appoint Vlad Filat (PLDM).

Suspected of corruption, Filat was forced to step down on March 5 following a vote of no confidence. According to the Constitutional Court, he is no longer entitled to lead the government.

Several thousand members of the Labour Party (PvdA), including a number of mayors, and members of the PvdA youth section, the Young Socialists (JS), have announced their opposition to government plans to initiate criminal proceedings against undocumented migrants.

The protesters have launched a petition, and plan to raise the issue at the party congress on April 27. In particular, they will demand that party leader Diederik Samsom, “drop the project, and change course to re-establish the fundamental principle of the party, which is ‘the right to a decent life’”.

The daily explains that the measure to criminalise migrants was part of a package agreed last autumn by the members of the ruling coalition, the PvdA and the VVD led by Prime Minister Mark Rutte. In exchange for the measure the PvdA succeeded in imposing a ban on the deportation of minors.

José Manuel Barroso’s remarks to the effect that “austerity policies have reached their limits” have attracted the ire of the ruling Christian Democrat (CDU) and liberal (FDP) coalition in Berlin.

The Vice-President of the CDU group in the Bundestag described the Commission President’s speech as “nonsense”, while Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle (FDP) insisted that “abandoning the policy of budgetary consolidation would pave the way for years of mass unemployment in Europe.”

According to the latest EU statisitics, published on April 22, the Eurozone deficit now stands at 3.7 per cent. Many experts have expressed concern that, in the current context of economic gloom, “Europe may be ready to throw in the towel."

After several months of heated debate, on April 23, the French National Assembly definitively authorised marriage and adoption for same-sex couples, when it passed controversial “marriage for all” legislation by 331 votes to 225 .

“This is a great day in the history of democracy,” remarked Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, who is quoted by the Polish daily. France is the ninth European country to introduce same-sex marriage.

The vote is also an important symbol of homosexual rights in Europe, remarks the newspaper.

Now that the pace of cleanup policies has been criticised in “the very temples of economic discipline,” notably by European Commission President, José Manuel Barroso, Libération wonders if all of this is not leading to a change of course for Europe.”

The left-wing daily points out that austerity policies have even been called into question by the Netherlands, which, when faced with the prospect of recession, gave up on its “good student’s” plan to introduce €4bn in spending cuts.

In Europe, "six countries have already or will shortly be obtaining Brussels’ approval for the extra time" they need to restore balanced budgets. However, notes the newspaper, "the key to a change in European policy is not in Brussels, but in Berlin."

After being re-elected as president of the Italian Republic on April 20, Giorgio Napolitano is expected to approve the formation of a new government as early as today.

The centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party (PDL) are obliged to work together again, after supporting Mario Monti’s “technocratic” government, and are currently negotiating who will lead it.

After the candidacy of Florence mayor and probable next PD leader Matteo Renzi, 38, was vetoed by Berlusconi, former PM Giuliano Amato, 75, was considered the frontrunner, but support is now growing for 46-year-old PD deputy secretary Enrico Letta.

In any case, the new government should number no more than 12 ministers, with non-party figures in the key posts, and is highly unlikely to last more than a year, says Corriere.