Until now, points out El País, in its approach to countries like Egypt and Tunisia "the EU strategy has been based on the principle of ‘security in exchange for millions of euros.’” The parameters that have now been announced -- free elections, freedom of speech in the press, an independent judiciary, the fight against corruption, and democratic control of security and armed forces -- will enable Europe to measure the level of democracy in these countries. The Madrid daily notes that the plan unveiled by the European diplomacy chief also includes measures for the control of migration flows. However, it points out that "Ashton has denied that the plan offers money to prevent immigration."

Nabucco, on the other hand, appears increasingly unconvincing, adds the French daily, for want of sufficient natural gas reserves to justify its construction. Gazprom has in fact “methodically drained the Central Asian gas reserves by clinching multiple long-term purchase contracts in the region, thereby reducing by as much the volumes that Nabucco could carry". As Pierre Noël, an energy specialist at Cambridge University, explains to La Tribune, "By announcing the construction of the gas pipeline even before securing the gas reserves, Brussels killed the project."

But South Stream still has issues of its own to address. According to the EUobserver, Koen Minne, the CEO of the Belgian group Enex, is supposed to sign a deal for compressed natural gas (CNG) with Turkmenistan in November. Under that agreement, Enex and a consortium of European companies are to transport between 3 and 4 billion cubic metres p.a. of Turkoman gas to the EU. The gas would be shipped across the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan, then relayed to the EU via the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum Azero-Turkish pipeline.

For Frontex’s deputy director, the increased role of the European Union “will come as a relief to national governments who will no longer have to 'carry the burden' of negative public opinion, embarrassment and disapproval prompted by collective repatriation procedures." Le Monde also notes that "another advantage” of grouped operations is that they benefit from the “added weight” of the EU, “which can exert more pressure than individual member states when negotiating with third countries on the return of their citizens.”

Meanwhile, Dziennik writes in an editorial that a special EU-appointed committee has been working on a report on the Georgian-Russian war for the past nine months. According to ‘reliable sources’ the as yet unpublished report will blame Georgia for starting the conflict.