The impact on Chinese airlines with routes to Europe was unclear. Although the EU’s carbon scheme went into effect for airlines on January 1, Brussels has not started charging them yet. But all airlines using EU airports have been brought into the scheme. Those that do not comply face fines while persistent offenders could be banned from EU airports.

The Financial Times notes that the aviation industry “only accounts for about 3 per cent of global carbon emissions” but “the EU believes its carbon trading scheme is an important part of the fight against climate change.”

A threat and a sharp choice of words that the FTD describes as “remarkable.” The fact that the Secretary of State “is talking about a transportation issue shows how politicised this particular dispute has become,” the newspaper writes. Europe decided in 2008 that the directive on greenhouse gas emission allowance trading would include airlines, and in order not to disadvantage European airlines, it has called for all flights to or from Europe to be included in the directive – that is, flights by non-European companies as well as routes outside European airspace.

China has already warned that billions in contracts with the Franco-German aircraft maker Airbus may fall through, while Russia and India are threatening to curtail or cancel overflights by European airlines. Like the other countries, the United States sees the EU plan as an affront to the sovereignty of their own airspace.

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.

Although the companies concerned insist that there is "nothing illegal" in the way they manage their staff, the newspaper explains that the Belgian Transport Workers Union (UBOT) believes it has "sufficient grounds to go to court". In a bid to prevent companies from employing foreign workers, UBOT is demanding that "East Europeans benefit from the same pay scales as their Belgian counterparts".

La Stampa welcomes the breaching of "the wall of illegality that surrounded the work site," while acknowledging that fears voiced by local residents about the site's impact on the valley are legitimate. "The start of work will send a positive signal to the European Union, which had issued a number of ultimatums over delays on the Italian section of the project.” As La Stampa points out, if construction work had not begun by the end of June, 600 million euros in European grants for the Lyon-Turin line – which is set to cut journey times between Paris and Milan from seven to three hours – could have been lost.

Meanwhile Polish state railways (PKP) hope to join the Russian project although officials admit no “talks” have been held on the subject. Gazeta Wyborcza ponders the “economic sense” of the new railway links, stressing the fact that according to estimates, “railway could be competitive on distances up to 750 km” (on longer hauls planes remain cheaper). The distance from Moscow to Berlin is over 1600 km. Hence there must be other reasons for the new railway connections with the West. “Russians want to show they have money and they are not afraid of investing in infrastructure”, explains Adrian Furgalski, director of the Railway Business Forum.

The European Parliament will be concerned about the massive breach of privacy entailed by the storage and analysis of such information, while supporters of the plan are arguing that it will play a key role in the fight against crime. The issue may also be determined by considerations of self-sufficiency, for the European executive, a situation “in which member states have to rely on third countries to inform them of the presence of terrorists on their territory” should not be allowed to continue.

On the issue of freight services, Die Zeit cites the case of the planned Genoa-Rotterdam link, which is supposed to “ship large quantities of goods from the Italian port to destinations across Europe.” The Dutch section of the line, which is partly underground, was completed three years ago. The Swiss have completed the first phase of work on the Gotthard Base Tunnel, “but nothing has been done in Germany” where the trains “continue to zigzag across the country on 150 year-old tracks.”

Firstly, because Russia refuses to recognise the Chicago Convention concerning the right to free flight over its territory, it earns some $0.5 billion (€0.35 billion) in airspace permits annually. Another obstacle, according to the Polish daily, could be Vladimir Putin’s “hurt pride”. His ambition was to turn national airline Aeroflot into a key global player, with a takeover of Alitalia allowing the Russian carrier to operate freely on the European market. But that dream was shattered when the Commission blocked the deal. “Today Putin is taking his revenge on the Commission, [blaming it] for the fact that Aeroflot remains a marginal airline”, comments the daily. Meanwhile Brussels, which has completed the implementation of an open skies agreement with the US, is already conducting negotiations on liberalisation of air travel with several other countries including Australia, Brazil and New Zealand.

According to the most recent estimates, the construction of the New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA) will cost 18.7 billion Swiss francs (14 billion euros), of which 12.2 billion will be spent on the GBT and the Ceneri Base Tunnel, which will feed into it. “That is 3.9 billion more than the budget presented to parliament and the people 12 years ago,” remarks the newspaper.

Now that excavation work on the tunnel has been completed, Le Temps wonders if “Switzerland will not be subjected to further demands from the EU for an East-West corridor: “The enlargement of the EU to include the counties of the former Eastern Bloc has had a major impact on traffic flows. Demand may have grown on the North-South axis, but it has soared on East-West routes.” However,  Swiss authorities believe that “East-West traffic will pass to both the north and south of the country,” on the  Paris-Strasbourg-Munich and Spain-Lombardy-Balkans routes.