A 25-year-old muslim convert, wanted by police in Italy for recruiting terrorists, was killed fighting alongside the Syrian rebels in the battle for Qusayr in recent weeks, reveals La Repubblica.

According to Italian islamic community members quoted by the daily, “45-50 people have left Italy to join the Syrian rebels,” including a woman, and at least seven Italian converts are among the 300 Western fighters captured and currently held by the Syrian army.

Foreign Minister Emma Bonino downplayed the possibility of an “Islamic wave from Italy,” but intelligence services fear that these volunteers might carry out terrorist acts when they return to Italy.

“Happily there is a green light for free trade,” enthuses Le Monde, now that Barack Obama and European leaders have finally decided to begin talks for a vast bilateral accord at the 17-18 June G8 summit in Northern Ireland.

In the wake of two decades of attempts in vain, the rapprochement on trade between the two shores of the Atlantic “is good news”, announces the Parisian daily, which at the same time warns —

The game is not over yet. It will take a minimum of two years to address a large number of contentious issues: financial regulation, the protection of personal data in the context of the PRISM eavesdropping scandal, GMO crops, growth hormones in beef...

Caution is thus advised, because a breakthrough on any of these cannot be taken for granted. Even France’s hard-fought battle to exclude audiovisual media from negotiations, which was apparently won on 14 June, may not be definitive, remarks Le Monde. The daily continues —

Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht, who is to lead the European negotiation team, insists audiovisual media has only “provisionally” been excluded. He is worried the Obama administration will respond by withdrawing other sectors where Europe was hoping for concessions from the discussions: government contracts, geographical indications on product labels, transport…

For Die Tageszeitung, the decision to exclude audiovisual media nonetheless amounts to a victory. “Filmmaking will continue to be protected. France, which has retained the right to finance film production, can still hold its own against the Hollywood studios,” announces the enthusiastic German daily.

“Security is tight around the Lough Erne resort and the town of Enniskillen,” writes The Belfast Telegraph of the G8 summit of world leaders that begins there on June 17. But despite the presence of 8,000 police and security personnel deployed to keep an eye on an estimated 2,000 anti-capitalist protesters, local officials do not expect any major threats.

The newspaper notes however that authorities are not taking any chances to show they are serious about security, observing

three recently purchased drones will also be deployed to keep and eye from the sky when the world wealthiest leaders gather.

British authorities spied on other countries' leaders and officials “by attacking both the computers and the telephones of delegates” at 2009’s G20 meetings in London, The Guardian reveals as part of its investigation into top secret British and American surveillance programs.

According to the documents, top UK officials authorised the use of sophisticated spying capabilities to monitor the communications of guests, including setting up internet cafes to intercept emails and monitor online activity, tapping into BlackBerry communications, supplying analysts with ongoing evidence “of who was phoning who at the summit”, and specifically targetting Turkish and Russian officials.

The daily notes its revelation “is likely to lead to some tension” at the G8 summit that begins in Northern Ireland on Monday, all of whose guests were potential targets at the 2009 summits.

Moldova and the European Union concluded negotiations on June 12, on a free trade agreement, reports Timpul. The daily hails the outcome of discussions which were threatened by the political instability that has rocked the former Soviet republic, which is a candidate for EU accession, as the first success for Iurie Leanca’s pro-European administration.

The agreement “will be signed at the Vilnius Eastern Partnership summit to be held in November 2013, and most likely come into force in 2014,” reports the Moldovan daily, which enthusiastically outlines the advantages of plans —

… for integration in a wider economic area, the progressive liberalisation of trade in goods and services, the free circulation of labour, reduced customs tariffs, and the abolition of quotas… which take into account objections from farmers, who are wary of a possible reduction in their competitiveness.

In contrast, former president and pro-Russian opposition leader, Vladimir Voronine, described the accord as “a catastrophe that will close the door on Russia and Ukraine.”

According to information revealed to The Guardian by Edward Snowden – a former CIA technician turned whistleblower – in 2007, the American National Security Agency (NSA) set a trap for a Swiss banker, whom it subsequently recruited with a view to obtaining “secret banking information.”

Le Temps wonders about the threat to financial institutions posed by government spying, which “the banks do not seem to have identified as a specific risk.”

At the same time, the daily notes that —

… Swiss secret services, which appeared very foolish last year when they allowed a computer technician get away with millions of data records, will no doubt be smiling about the current embarrassment of their American colleagues.

"A Belgian is leading killing sprees and rapes against 'non-believers,'" in Syria, reads a headline in Belgian daily De Standaard, following the discovery, on June 7, of a web video dated last March. It shows the decapitation, by a group of jihadists, some of them Flemish-speaking, of a man presumed to be Shia. "There are chances that the execution was linked to Hussain Elouassaki, a 22-year-old nursing aid for the handicapped from Vilvorde," near Brussels, writes the paper, adding –

“>Telephone surveillance and the questioning of combatants returning from Syria made available to newspaper De Morgen, show that a group of 35 to 40 Belgians has settled around Aleppo. They are under the command of Hussain Elouassaki, who left for Syria in September. In a telephone conversation with his brother Abdelouafi [...] he explained how he had decapitated someone and how he had raped and murdered 30 women.

The paper reports that among the 600 to 700 European combatants in Syria, most of the Belgians are "closely or distantly, linked to Sharia4Belgium. [...] Those who are complicit in this execution are liable to life imprisonment in our country."

In De Morgen's leader article entitled "Our boys in Syria," Yves Desmet is indignant in front of "the banalisation of evil" demonstrated by the combatants –

How did these guys arrive at such a transformation? [...] From being pariahs in a country that did not want them, they suddenly became heroes in a holy war. It is not surprising. At the same time, it is a cold comfort to know that most of them never want to return [to Belgium].

EU ministers of foreign affairs decided last night that from June 1, member states will be allowed to supply Syrian rebels with weapons, which will be delivered under strict conditions. The decision has been announced in the runup to a planned peace conference next month in Geneva.

Once the arms embargo has been lifted, European countries will be able to support the rebels in their fight against President Assad. However, the decision, made after almost twelve hours of deliberation, doesn’t imply that the EU countries will start delivering weapons immediately, emphasized the British minister of Foreign Affairs William Hague. The purpose of the resolution is to “force the regime to the negotiation table.”

The Netherlands and several other countries refused to support the decision to ship weapons to an “unstable region”. However faced with “British and French insistence on a relaxation of sanctions, Germany and the Netherlands were obliged to seek a compromise,” writes De Volkskrant. Only the weapons embargo will be lifted, other sanctions – such as punitive economic measures – will remain in force.

Ahead of an EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels today that will discuss the controversial question of terminating the embargo on arms supplies to Syrian rebel groups, Le Monde has published an investigation, which they claim proves that the army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has carried out chemical gas attacks.

“The seriousness of the cases, their growing number, and the tactics used, show that this is not about tear gas on the front, but about much more toxic weapons, in a completely different category,” points out the article by a Le Monde journalist and an independent photographer, who spent two months in and around the Syrian capital, Damascus. Tests are still being carried out to identify the type of gas used.

The daily concludes —

… western leaders urgently need to make public what they know about chemical weapons in Syria. They must stop humming and hawing about a ‘red line’ and put an end to any ambiguity before it is too late.

“The EU struggles for unity on Syrian arms embargo,” notes the European Voice. The weekly explains that “an Anglo-French bid to end the European Union's ban on the sale of arms to rebel forces in Syria appears doomed to failure,” because “opposition to ending the ban on arms sales has, if anything, hardened.”

In February, the UK and France succeeded in persuading other member states to ease the arms embargo and back a move allowing the supply of non-lethal military items, such as communications and logistics equipment, to rebel forces battling Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Now, following talks between French President François Hollande and British Prime Minister David Cameron on May 22, even Paris and London seem to have cooled on the idea, principally due to fears weapons could fall into Islamists’ hands. The newspaper continues –

There are significant divisions among member states over Syria, principally on three issues. Austria has been particularly vocal in opposing the easing of arms restrictions on the rebels, questioning the need and the impact. Sweden has been the most reluctant to accept the longer-term trend, towards tougher sanctions against the regime of Assad, arguing that that would limit the space for a political solution. In addition, in recent months, the Czech Republic has been vocal in questioning the quality of the control over rebel forces exercised by the rebels' major political body, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC).

The embargo will be debated at an EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on May 27 ahead of a June 1 deadline for its renewal or cancellation. Meanwhile a new US and Russian-backed Syrian peace conference has been arranged for early June in Geneva, which could see the SNC attend talks with members of the Syrian government.

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.

European Union member states have reached a preliminary agreement to ease an embargo on Syrian oil exports in what would be the first easing of sanctions since the beginning of President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on popular dissent two years ago.

The International Herald Tribune says diplomatic sources devised the agreement to give opposition-held areas greater autonomy and flexibility to build an economic base through petroleum resources.

Pending a review of senior Union officials, European foreign ministers will consider endorsing the draft agreement on Monday. Further legislative steps could be required for the embargo to be eased.

Syrian opposition representatives, meanwhile, have stepped up calls for the Union to end a weapons embargo slated to expire at the end of May, reports the Irish Times.

Easing the embargo is “the only way” to stop the bloodshed, argued Walid Saffour, UK ambassador of the Syrian National Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, during a visit to Dublin on Wednesday.

Britain and France are in favour of giving military assistance to the opposition, but other member states are against contributing to the further militarisation of the conflict.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin inaugurated the world’s largest industrial technology trade fair in Hanover on April 7.

“The greetings were a little rigid,” notes the newspaper, which found that in spite of their smiles and the announcement of reinforced bilateral economic relations, the two leaders appeared tense at the ceremony.

Russia’s recent decision to tighten regulations on foreign NGO’s and recent police visits to the Moscow offices of several German NGOs, including Transparency International and the Konrad Adenauer and Friedrich Ebert thinktanks, are responsible for the strained atmosphere.

Four years after the Twitter Revolution, which marked the end of communist government in Moldova and ushered the Alliance for European Integration into power, the daily points out that there has been no inquiry into atrocities that occurred during the unrest.

Officially, three people were killed and more than 400 were tortured, but the identities of those to blame, “faces hidden from the eyes of the Moldovan public”, have never been established.

The country’s prosecutors and part of its press argue that the true victims were police officers. “Who would be angry if the truth was known?” wonders Timpul. The pro-European government, which was democratically elected in the aftermath of the vote, was forced out of office on March 5, and the country is currently ruled by an interim government.

On March 27, Pristina adopted an eight-point plan, proposed by European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, which is designed to regulate collaboration with Serbian-run local governments in Northern Kosovo.

First proposed on March 21, the Ashton plan defines the terms and conditions under which the local governments can take charge of specific duties, and rules for cooperation between them.

Serbian Vice-Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić, who has called the plan "unacceptable", has been invited, along with Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacić, to join the final cycle of talks between Serbia and Kosovo, scheduled for April 2, in Brussels.

When armed rebellion began in Syria two years ago, there were fears that European Muslims interested in jihad would go there to train to fight a holy war. If the headline in Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, "Youthful gang members are going to war in the name of Islam," is to be believed, that time has come.

According to the Danish Secret Services —

… several members of the most violent gangs of immigrants in Copenhagen are currently in Syria where they have gone in order to participate in jihad. This may turn hardened criminals into hardline fundamentalists. "This is a new trend. These people are already potentially dangerous and when they return home, they have access to arms and explosives. It is very worrisome to see these types of ties forming between Islam and criminals," says the head of the Danish Secret Services.

If the Danes are concerned, the Belgians also have their share of woes. In Europe, Belgium has become the "primary supplier" of youth going to Syria for the jihad, reports Belgian daily De Morgen. The paper cites a terrorism expert who says that "in Belgium, there is still a great potential for finding combatants" but "most will return disillusioned" —

… they have heroic visions in their heads and expect to become warriors but most of them will not even have weapons. They will be deployed either to build barricades or to man an observation post or as cannon fodder.

According to another Belgian daily De Standaard, the Sharia4Belgium group, which was officially disbanded at the end of 2012, plays an important role in the recruitment of young jihadists in Belgium for the Syrian rebellion.

On March 21, Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), called on on his followers to give up their armed campaign, begun in 1984, and to continue the struggle for an autonomous Kurdish state through conventional peaceful politics.

Öcalan has been held on the island of Imrali since his arrest in 1999, and his call was read out by a Kurdish MP in Diyarbakir, the main Kurdish city in southeastern Turkey, during “Nowruz”, the celebration of the Kurdish New Year.

The European Union, which “offers its full support and financial assistance to the [Turkish] pre-accession process” has “warmly welcomed” the move, which it describes as “an important step forward.”

The enthusiasm that greeted the announcement that the United States would begin negotiations with the EU to create a free-trade zone, has now "dropped off", writes Mohamed A. El-Erian, CEO of PIMCO, a US investment management firm, in an opinion piece published in French financial daily Les Echos.

Five weeks after it was first proposed by US President Barak Obama during his State of the Union speech, there are three main obstacles to the project, he says. The first is due to the modest economic potential of the proposal –

Free-trade agreements that promise the greatest benefits are those that link economies characterised by high tariffs, low levels of trade, and little overlap in consumption and production patterns. This is not the case for the EU and the US.

The second reason for a probable failure is due to conditions on the ground both in the EU and in the US.

A seemingly endless stream of short-term political dramas has made it extremely difficult for both Europe and the US to focus for long on any secular and structural initiative. In Europe, broad-based discussion was undermined by the outcome of the Italian election, [...] In the US, the disruption took the form of yet another fiscal mini-drama.

The third obstacle is due to –

the poor state of global policy dialogue, notwithstanding all the happy talk about global challenges and shared responsibilities. Last month’s G-20 meeting ended up as yet another expensive summit lacking sufficient content and follow through. Rather than catalysing constructive policy coordination, it has inadvertently encouraged complacency.

The government has refused to grant asylum to local interpreters working for the Swedish army in Afghanistan, arguing that all asylum seekers should receive equal treatment.

When Swedish forces commence their withdrawal from the country in June, the lives of some 30 interpreters, accused by the Taliban of collaborating with the enemy, will be in danger.

The armed forces’ commander in chief clearly expressed his support for a plan to grant asylum to the interpreters, to show that Sweden is a humane country.

French President François Hollande and UK Prime Minister David Cameron called on European Union leaders to support them in lifting the European arms embargo to Syria.

At an EU summit in Brussels, Hollande said France could no longer allow people to be “massacred by a regime which has shown it doesn’t want a political discussion.”

He said London and Paris were agreed that the embargo should be ended, however the idea is likely to run into opposition from Germany, notes the daily.

A referendum on the status of the Falklands Islands (Las Malvinas in Spanish) carried out among the South Atlantic archipelago’s 2,900 inhabitants found 99.8 per cent support for remaining a UK overseas territory, rather than becoming part of Argentina.

The ownership of the tiny islands, located around 310 miles off the south-east coast of Argentina, has long been disputed by the two nations and triggered the Falklands War between Britain and the South American country in 1982.

Recently, Argentina has become increasingly vocal in its calls for Britain to abandon its rights to the area, which it has controlled for more than 150 years. For The Daily Telegraph’s feature writer Neil Tweedie, –

The result was a vindication for [UK Prime Minister] David Cameron, who backed the referendum as a tangible expression of the islanders’ right to self-determination, and a snub to Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, president of Argentina, who had called it irrelevant and the product of an ‘implanted population’. [...] She has used the issue to distract her countrymen from economic woes that include one of the world’s highest rates of inflation, but the policy appears to have backfired.

However, for The Guardian’s media columnist, Roy Greenslade,, writing ahead of the result, “the referendum still amounts to a rigged ballot.”

Argentina's response, that the referendum is a meaningless publicity stunt, is surely correct (even if one disagrees with the territorial claim by Buenos Aires). And it will be seen that way across the world, including the United States. [...] Perhaps Argentina's best hope lies in persuading 1,700 of its people to emigrate to the islands in the hope of Britain holding another ballot in seven years' time.

On the Argentinian side, the Buenos Aires’ daily Clarín notes that, “30 years after the war,” the international context has changed –

The conflict is no longer bilateral. It is now regional. [...] A third agent has emerged, and the dispute is no longer limited to London and Buenos Aires. This third agent is the population on the islands, who are acting autonomously from the British government, expressed through its political authority.

On a similar theme, La Nación considers that with this referendum

almost 60 per cent of the voters have defined an identity: islanders from the Falklands [...] Whether they are mistaken or not, islanders believe they rule themselves in all essential matters and that they are, closely linked to community life. And they think that it is better to delegate external relations and defence. They prefer to err that way, and to live that way.

The European Union has pledged €610m in financial support to Ukraine while European Council President Herman Van Rompuy has said Kiev must demonstrate “determined action” on a host of areas, including judicial reform, before May, if there is to be a trade deal between the two sides before the end of the year. In order to qualify for the financial aid, the Ukraine must also secure the support of the International Monetary Fund.

For the European Voice, the move will put Ukraine under “intense pressure to accelerate reforms,” adding that Kiev must address the issue of “selective justice”, such as the jail terms handed down to four politicians, including former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

An editorial written in European Voice ahead of the EU announcement urged Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, to “show the EU [the country] is serious about reform,” adding –

Yanukovych's only viable option is to reform aggressively at home along the lines demanded by the Commission, reinforcing this by showing what Ukraine is capable of internationally [...] Yanukovych cannot expect the EU's member states to take gambles on Ukraine, if he himself is not prepared to take gambles on reform that he says are in Ukraine's own interests.

Meanwhile, Gazeta Wyborcza insists,

“It is high time Kiev made a historic choice between turning East, where Vladimir Putin is trying to lure it with cheap gas, or […] signing an association agreement with the EU”. According to the Warsaw daily –

Kiev has a tough choice ahead of it. [...] It would be best to take advantage of the cheap gas and open the rich Russian market but at the same time have Western loans and technologies. And no-visa travel to Europe would be yet another bonus, if granted. A very pragmatic attitude indeed.

On February 14, Moldova’s Liberal-Democratic Prime Minister, Vlad Filat, announced that he would quit the Alliance for European Integration (the coalition in power since 2009), deploring prevailing corruption and the politisation of high-profile state jobs.

However, according to the press, the real catalyst for the crisis was the fatal accident in the course of a hunting trip attended by several high ranking officials, which took place in December 2012, and particularly the role of the former attorney general, who is member of one of the parties in the ruling coalition.

Diplomats in Romania failed to anticipate the crisis in the country's eastern neighbour. Swedish, Polish and British foreign ministers are expected to arrive in Chișinău next week.

The creation of a transatlantic free trade zone would result in considerable benefits for the United States and Europe, argues the editor in chief of the business daily, Gabor Steingart.

An association of states based on shared ideas and interests, which is sustained by free trade, would amount to a continuation, rather than a break, with the development of both continents. “Moreover, it would send a message of freedom to countries, like China, where state capitalism has been established.“

On January 30, as Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi made his first visit to Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel asked the new leader to engage in a dialogue with all the political forces in his country and to ensure respect for freedom of religion and human rights.

Morsi declared that "Egypt will be governed by a rule of law which is neither military nor theocratic." He had to cancel the French stop on his European trip in order to return to Egypt to help resolve several days of violent street protest.

Britain may send hundreds of troops to Mali and neighbouring West African countries, as part of efforts to support France in its operation to drive Islamist militants from its former colony.

Downing Street said Britain is "keen" to provide further military assistance to France, but said forces will not engage in combat. UK military forces could be dispatched to Nigeria and Senegal to train local troops or boost surveillance operations.

“What can you give Europe, Mr Obama?” asks Rzeczpospolita the day after the US president’s swearing-in ceremony in Washington. The daily hastens to answer: not much.

For the American leader, Europe has been “less and less important”, Rzeczpospolita points out. The president has already announced a “pivot” towards Asia and the Pacific region and “there are no reasons for him to suddenly become interested in the Old Continent”. The United States is becoming a “superpower on a budget”, prone to influencing global affairs “from the back seat”, as was recently demonstrated in Libya. By not intervening directly, the US was able to avoid large military spending. “In this situation,” adds Rzeczpospolita –

It is really hard to say what Europe can expect from Mr Obama in his second term. It should be suggested to him that Europe is no less important than Asia. That he should draw conclusions from the failure of the “reset” with Russia and to finally understand the security needs of Central Europe and Poland. But will he ever do that? Will European leaders manage to send such a message? This, unfortunately, is rather unlikely.

Initial criticism of the Algerian army’s intervention to put an end to the hostage crisis In Amenas “appears to have died down because no country is ready to compromise relations with Algiers for a handful of hostages,” remarks the daily. Only Japan has been openly critical. However, as Trouw points out, France is using Algerian airspace to conduct its war in Mali, Obama needs Algiers for the fight against terrorism, and more generally, most of the countries who had citizens taken hostage have important oil and gas interests in Algeria.

On Thursday, European foreign ministers decided to send 250 military instructors to Mali, where they will provide training for African forces fighting Islamist groups. European states also want to provide logistical and financial support for 3,500 African troops deployed by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), whose date of arrival in Mali has yet to be determined.

Several people — French authorities have yet to announce an official figure — were killed on Thursday, when Algerian special forces attacked the jihadis who had taken hostage dozens of employees at the In Amenas gas plant. Fighting at the site continued through Thursday night and into Friday morning.

Up to 34 people — including several Britons — are reported dead in the assault launched by the Algerian army against Al Qaeda kidnappers who took scores of engineers hostage at a gas compound in In Amenas. As a consequence, UK Prime Minister David Cameron postponed his long-awaited Friday speech on Britain’s future in Europe, to deal with the Algerian crisis.

Under the mandate of the UN, the French forces are acting with the logistical support of the British to support Malian troops against the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, fighting for independence for the provinces of Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal, and against the Salafists under Ansar Dine, who are fighting to establish an Islamic regime in this part of Mali.

“François Hollande can be happy to have stopped the Taliban of the sands,” writes Libération, which nevertheless wonders where Operation Serval is headed –

Faced with the rise of the Islamists, French President François Hollande has “chosen the lesser evil,” writes Le Monde.

By intervening in Mali, “François Hollande has taken a risk,” writes Süddeutsche Zeitung, adding it's a risk he must not be left to take alone.

“The problem with the French intervention is that it is French,” says Tageszeitung. The alternative daily from Berlin deplores a “colonialism of the left” and notes that –

Furthermore, warns The Independent, intervening in Mali may “fuel radical Islamists' narrative of yet another... assault on Islam.” For columnist Owen Jones –

In Bucarest, Adevărul is worried about “the major consequences for a vast swathe of Africa” of Operation Serval, and about “the security of the EU and its citizens, inside or outside the community space.” Despite this, the paper notes, “the intervention was necessary due to the unprecedented increase in the number of Islamic cells [...] both north and south of the Sahara.” It adds, however –

“The question now is whether and how the EU will mobilise,” adds European Voice. The Brussels-based weekly inquires about the state of European defence and asks

After several months of talks, the European Parliament’s special envoys, former European Parliament president Pat Cox and Poland’s former president Aleksander Kwaśniewski, have failed to obtain Yulia Tymoshenko’s release from prison. But Europe should continue to push Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to free her, says Gazeta Wyborcza’s commentator Wacław Radziwinowicz, noting that the two men have still managed to do a lot for the former Ukrainian PM, who was sentenced to seven years in prison in October 2011. Radziwinowicz writes that-

Europe is paying close attention to the fate of the “Orange revolution princess”, and persistently, but also tactfully, is demanding fair treatment for her. This gives Tymoshenko a safety guarantee. Yanukovych, aware that Brussels is watching him, will not listen to his aides who would love to ‘break the hag’s neck’.

But what is at stake in this game is not only Tymoshenko’s future, but also Ukraine’s place in Europe, the daily’s commentator observes. All the more in light of recent attempts by Moscow to pull Kiev back into its sphere of influence. However, Yanukovych -

can’t keep vacillating between the East and the West forever. The more Moscow keeps pressing him, the more willing he will be to listen to the European Parliament envoys talking to him patiently, and he will find it easier to realise that if the Ukraine conducts the necessary reforms, it will find its place in Europe.

Neither the Czech president Václav Klaus nor PM Petr Nečas will attend the Nobel ceremony in Oslo on December 10, when the EU will receive the peace prize for promoting democracy and human rights over six decades. Klaus, a notorious critic of the EU who has previously called the Committee’s decision a “tragic joke,” gave no reason for his absence, writes MF Dnes, and Nečas has cited “previous engagements.” Only the foreign minister and candidate for the January presidential election Karel Schwarzenberg “would like to go, but nobody has invited him.”

The fact that none of the Czech "big cheeses" are attending the Oslo ceremony is not a big deal, says the daily –

Hardly anyone will notice and Brussels will save money on having to keep an eye on various small stationery items. [A reference to when Klaus was caught on camera pocketing a pen at an offical engagement.] The entire affair wouldn't be worth mentioning if it wasn't a symbol of the muddled and faulty relationship of our country to the EU. Without the EU, the existence of not only the Czech Republic but of Central Europe as such is just as precarious as it used to be in the past.

If giving the EU the prize today is a mistake, the paper suggests, it is only because “the Union’s founding fathers – such as Adenauer, Churchill, Schumann or Spinelli – should have received one while they were still alive.” Lidové Noviny, for its part, calls for a "Critique not boycott." The daily admits that the EU “may not be the ideal winner” and believes it is better to make specific criticisms of EU policy, rather than expressing dissatisfaction simply by boycotting the entire ceremony.

Yet it is “not only the Eurosceptic Czech Republic and Britain, but also Slovakia” who are snubbing the festivities, adds SME. The Bratislava daily explains that due to “acute problems” requiring his immediate attention at home, the Slovak PM Robert “Fico is not going to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony,” either. And neither is President Gašparovič, who will instead be heading for Prague – to say goodbye to the soon-departing Klaus.

The EU has a “secret member”: China. If Die Welt is to be believed, the EU’s “most important trading partner after the United States” is increasingly intent on developing bilateral relations with Europe’s member states, much to the dismay of Brussels.

In early September, China’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs invited 16 countries from Central and Eastern Europe to Beijing for a “European Conference” to celebrate the creation of a new association of Central and Eastern European states, dubbed “CEE” by the newspaper. The association, which is now staffed by a secretariat, includes 16 countries, ten of which are members of the EU. Although the ambassadors from a swathe of territory which extends from Albania to Poland were to be present at the event, no one thought to invite an official from the EU –

Brussels’ representatives responded with alarm: the new initiative appeared to highlight the principle of divide and rule in Chinese policy with regard to the EU.

While Brussels refuses to budge on questions that China considers to be important like the recognition of the country as a market economy and an end to the embargo on arms sales, Beijing will continue to subtly develop dependent relationships with certain European states, explains political scientist Jonas Parello-Plesner in the Berlin daily. For example with Greece, where China has taken over part of the port of Piraeus, and with Hungary which recently received a “special loan” from China for one billion euros.

Although Chinese diplomats affirm that one of the aims of this economic cooperation is “to reinforce relations with the EU”, Die Welt notes that Brussels remains sceptical –

Its representatives are wondering if Beijing is intent on using its economic leverage to transform the countries of the CEE into a lobby.