Europe screeched to a halt a few feet from the brink.
Facing an onslaught of international financial speculation, Europe’s political class waited until mid-May to do what it should have done
months ago, when the now-raging Greek crisis was just a blip on the radar screen. What matters now, or, better said, once the crisis abates, is that the conduct of European affairs doesn’t return to business as usual. If there’s one certainty in a global world fraught with instability, it’s that Europe can play a significant international role only if it succeeds in making a qualitative leap in the way it handles governance.
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by Aldo Bonomi
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 There’s a new ghost haunting Europe, one that’s keeping liberal elites
and public opinion stirring at night — the specter of populism. Xenophobic and anti-European parties such as Hungary’s Jobbik
(The Movement for a Better Hungary), Holland’s Party for Freedom ( PVV) and Italy’s Northern League have all made significant electoral inroads lately. Meanwhile, street protests in Athens, giving voice to populist sentiment in their own way, have driven mass media and academics to pay far more attention to the growth of the phenomenon.
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by Carla Tonini
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 Since joining the European Union in 2004, Poland has been growing at a rate of 5.4 percent annually. That’s largely because of its ability to copy Western electronics products and manufacture them cheaply. But as Poland is gradually forced into line with European Union standards, the advantage it now has may well turn into liabilities, as more skilled states such as China and Vietnam blunt Poland’s advantage. So while the short term looks good, the long term is far less rosy.
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by Marina Gersony
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 Zoika Kapuscinski, now known as Rene Maisner, retains vivid recollections of her distinguished father, the late Polish correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinki. He was private, kind, and pleasant, but ultimately more inclined to write down his stories down than tell them to family and friends.
She and her mother Alicja sat down and offered their impressions of early life with a man that many rank among the great writers and journalists of the 20 century.
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by Lev Gudkov
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 Though 20 years have passed since the birth of post-Soviet Russia, citizens still look at institutions of power as controlling their judicial system. They defer to authority and laws they might not agree rather than risk taking on an adversarial state they’re convinced has rigged both justice and judges. An anachronistic view of what law means is partly to blame.
So is poor legal training. Unless Russia is willing to overhaul the system, putting a premium on the value of private property, little is likely to change.
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by Marie Bennigsen Broxup
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 Despite Moscow’s efforts to gag local media with assassinations and organized disruptions, the North Caucasus are beginning to rise up against Russia’s postwar plans. In the word of one critic, the “Putin zigzag” in the region has run its course, putting Russia, whose troops are spread thin, on a collision course with catastrophe.
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