Nonetheless, on the eve of a presidential election that will almost certainly herald Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin, such fears still persist. At a recent colloquium Taavi Roivas, President of the Estonian parliament’s European Affairs Committee, remarked that “one of the reasons that led the Estonian population to enthusiastically embrace the euro in 2011 is the fact that it amounts to a further step away from Russian influence".

Whether we like it or not, Russia will remain a crucial partner for Europe whose importance should not be underestimated. As the EU's main gas supplier, it stands to benefit from an even greater influence once the South Stream and Nord Stream pipelines come on-line. But that is not all. It is also the home country of several wealthy entrepreneurs who have invested in European businesses (football, casinos, media outlets etc.), as well as being one of the EU’s creditors. 

All of these factors will be reinforced by a further presidential mandate for Putin: Vladimir Vladimirovitch will have the means to achieve a number of projects that he has announced in recent years, like the creation of a Eurasian Union by 2015, the waiving of visa restrictions for Russians traveling abroad and a major increase in spending on the Russian military. The overwhelming likelihood is that Moscow's collaboration will be essential for future initiatives within the EU, as well as in neighbouring countries: the case of Syria, where a UN resolution has been effectively blocked by a Sino-Russian veto is a testament to this fact.

At the same time, the effectiveness of the Kremlin’s “divide and conquer tactics” is unlikely to be challenged by EU countries which have failed to agree a united response to the real or supposed military threat represented by Moscow while continuing to prioritise national energy interests over European ones.

In an article by Vladimir Putin, published by Ria Novosti at the end of February, the future president set the tone for changes to come: "Russia is an inalienable and organic part of Greater Europe and European civilization. Our citizens think of themselves as Europeans. […]. That is why Russia proposes moving toward the creation of a common economic and human space from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean – a community that Russian experts refer to as "the Union of Europe".

In response to such ambitions, Europe would do well to set aside the mistrust and disdain that have marked relations in the past. With Putin’s re-election, Europe will have to contend with an ambitious Russia which has the resources to realise its projects. With this in mind it should be treated as an equal partner.

The Berlin daily is referring to a bill that the Estonian Minister of Defence is hoping to have adopted in March. According to the text, all those who took part in the fight against the Soviet Union during the Second World War will be granted the status of “freedom fighters,” which includes Estonian members of the SS.

Previous attempts to push through the bill failed in 2006 and on 2010. This time around, "majority support appears to guaranteed,” reports TAZ. The Russian embassy in Tallinn has described the bill as “blasphemous,” while the German Green Party has criticised a "retrospective justification of the atrocities perpetrated by Hitler’s henchmen in the Soviet Union."

In northern Europe, Eesti Pävaleht insists that the project is a “clear green light” for the new “Rail Balitca” axis that will link Estonia to the Polish-Lithuanian border via Latvia. Plans for the route, which have been put forward by Estonia and Lithuania “appear tailor-made for the conditions required by Brussels,” writes the Estonian daily, which notes that this is the first time that “the EU has agreed to spend such significant sums on transport projects which are not designed to solely serve the needs of individual member states.” For the newspaper, the implementation of the Rail Baltica project will also put an end to the proposal for a high speed link between Riga and Moscow, which was put forward by former Latvian president Valdis Zatlers but later contested by Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis – in a move which highlights Latvia’s desire to stand back from its relationship with Russia.

But the skies over the eurozone haven’t been entirely unclouded over the past few  years. The crisis has revealed the dearth of fiscal discipline in several states, and pessimists are mooting a possible breakup of the zone. “This context makes us wonder why Estonia bent over backwards to board a ship that is going to be wrecked,” wonders Postimees. “If the eurozone does indeed break up, that would be such a huge collapse that it wouldn’t really matter whether one is inside or outside the zone.”

“Little Estonia is going to bolster the euro,” predicts Edin Mujagic from the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands. Writing in Amsterdam daily De Volkskrant, the monetary economist points out that even if the Baltic republic is not an economic superpower, it is a “wonder” in matters of public finance. Its public debt comes to a mere 7%, significantly less than those of the eurozone’s economic powerhouses. In fact, adds Mujagic, Estonia’s entry into the single currency club is good news for Germany, the Netherlands and Finland. For these self-styled fiscal rigourists, the fact that the European Central Bank is admitting to its ranks a country “that encourages healthy public finance, does not want to finance its debt by selling government bonds  and prioritises keeping inflation under control is not a bad development”.

As Vanity Fair explains, delocalization has enabled drug companies to take advantage of conditions that are less strict and less expensive when conducting clinical trials which will “help persuade the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to declare the drugs safe and effective for Americans.” In 2008, 80 percent of products submitted for approval to the FDA were tested outside the United States: in all 58,788 trials, of which 876 were conducted in Romania, 589 in Ukraine and 716 in Turkey. Estonia, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Croatia are also considered to be good locations for off-shore trials.

The lack of proper regulatory framework has meant that many of these trials have proved to be deadly. The magazine sites the example of a flu-vaccine trial  conducted in a hostel for the homeless in Grudziadz, Poland. The subjects, who were paid two dollars for participating in the programme, “thought they were getting a regular flu shot. They were not. At least 20 of them died.”

Meanwhile, Milan daily Corriere della Sera explains that the Italian parliament has decided to postpone to September the vote on PM Silvio Berlusconi’s controversial “Gag Law” on wiretapped conversations. The law is contested by a large section of the judiciary, the press and public opinion, since it curtails the right to carry out wiretaps in the public interest and to publish the transcripts. Corriere also reports that blogs which do not publish corrections issued by the concerned parties also face heavy fines of up to €25,000.

The economy weekly quotes a report by the Deloitte consulting firm, who claim that European investors are ready to reinvest in emerging countries but are going to put Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia first: the three first countries have boosted investor confidence, the latter has benefited from converting to the euro. It is a "surprising conclusion" since Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic states had long since been the favourites amongst investors. That is the reason why "Romania shall not see the return of investment in the east before 2010" concludes Capital.