Prince Harry, the Queen’s grandson, admitted that he killed Taliban fighters in Afghanistan during his 20-week tour of duty, which ended on January 22, saying his role was to “take a life to save a life”. The 28-year-old Apache helicopter co-pilot said he had taken insurgents “out of the game” during missions to destroy Taliban targets and protect British servicemen on the ground.
Trouw, Amsterdam – Cartoon. See more.
NRC Handelsblad, Amsterdam – Less than six weeks after its launch — and a multitude of technical problems later — the high-speed Fyra train between Amsterdam and Brussels has been taken off the tracks. A flop that brings into question the way international supply contracts are handed out. See more.
Frankfurter Rundschau, Frankfurt – The people of Sedan, in northern France, have offered futile resistance to the Germans in three wars, from Bismarck to Hitler. Now, a journalist searching for the French-German reconciliation celebrated in the 50th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty, finds a community broken by poverty, that has nothing to keep alive but the ghosts of the past. See more.
The National Union of Hungarian Students (HÖOK) has signed an agreement with the government on student access to university scholarships. However, another major student representative body in the country, the Network of Students (HH), believes that the concessions made by the government are “insufficient”.
HH is demanding that the number of subsidised places in third-level education be restored to its 2011 level, and an end to contracts in which state funded students are obliged to commit to staying in Hungary when they graduate.
In the wake of the attack by an Islamist group on the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria, in which several Norwegians were among the hostages, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide has told the newspaper that his country “could make a military contribution [to the intervention] in Mali”.
De Volkskrant, Amsterdam – Cartoon. See more.
After months of discussions, eurozone finance ministers eventually found a successor as Eurogroup chairman to Luxemburg’s prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker. During the January 21 meeting in Brussels, they are expected to appoint Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem (labour party PvdA), reports De Volkskrant. The newspaper adds that the only critic of the Dutch candidate, French finance minister Pierre Moscovici, announced on French TV channel TV5 that he has dropped his opposition to the appointment.
De Volkskrant columnist Martin Sommer, is pleased to report that Dijsselbloem will prove more eurosceptic than his predecessor, saying –
Juncker […] thought the European leaders knew exactly what to do, and that it’s just a pity that the electorate is hard to convince. This has been the heart of the European way of thinking for ages, and if my feeling about Dijsselbloem is correct, his attitude is completely different.
Sommer thinks Dijsselbloem will be a welcome counterbalance to the other three presidents of the EU –
Dijsselbloem is […] an advocate of evidence based policy, which seems to me to be a good guiding principle in Europe. It’s also close to the views of [prime minister] Mark Rutte, who doesn’t want any long term visions [of the EU]. This is exactly what we need in the company of [EU Commission president] Barroso, [ECB president] Draghi and [EU Council] Van Rompuy. All three of them are heading full speed towards a ‘total Union’. Besides, all three all three catholics from the south.
Público has a radically different opinion. The Lisbon daily states that “the departure of Jean-Claude Juncker from the Eurogroup marks the end of a cycle and it is negative for Portugal.”
This is not a good news for Portugal, for the single currency and European integration. He has always been an ally of Portugal and never stopped warning about the excesses of a „punitive“ culture that rich countries of the north, impose on a south beset by crisis.
Público also finds Dijsselbloem’s capacity for negotiation matches that of his predecessor –
Jean-Claude Juncker was always able to create a bridge between the two extremes of the Paris-Berlin axis. This capacity for dialogue is also recognised in his successor. But Jeroen Dijsselbloem will assume this role as representative of the wealthy and without the political weight of his predecessor. He is a man of another Europe, where EU institutions have lost power and where integration is done not in the name of federalism, but as part of a power struggle in which the EU’s centre shifts from Brussels to Berlin.
Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, Warsaw – With every serious crisis we feel sorry for young people who cannot find work, calling them a “lost generation”. Well, there have been many such generations in history and they always succeeded in the end, writes DGP. See more.