The paper clip, 13 July

The front pages of the French newspapers are dominated this morning by coverage of an hour-long interview given by Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, on television last night. Sarkozy reiterated his intention to raise France's retirement age from 60 to 62 despite heavy opposition from trade unions. He also confirmed that he is planning a government reshuffle for the end of October. Sarkozy said allegations that Éric Woerth, France's labour minister, accepted illegal campaign contributions from Liliane Bettencourt, France's richest woman, were “slanderous”, and that he intended that Woerth should remain in the government. Le Figaro presents the interview as an attempt by Sarkozy to shake off the Woerth/Bettencourt corruption allegations so that a “new phase” of his government can be launched this autumn. Le Monde describes Sarkozy as stuck “between reform and scandal”. The financial daily Les Echos writes that, despite Sarkozy's public show of support, Woerth is expected to quit his post as treasurer of France's ruling UMP party, which he holds in addition to his post as labour minister.

The new Czech government will be appointed today by President Václav Klaus. Mladá fronta Dnes has a report, noting that the government also needed the approval of the rank-and-file of the smallest of the three coalition parties, the conservative-liberal Veci verejné (Public Affairs). The party put its participation in the government to an electronic referendum.

Slovakia's hesitation to sign up to the EU's emergency fund of €750 billion has angered its EU partners, Handelsblatt reports. Slovakia's Sme writes that the new Slovak prime minister, Iveta Radicová, and her finance minister, Ivan Mikloš, visited Brussels to negotiate about the fund, not to add its signature to the agreement. It notes that German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaüble sees no room for negotiation.

For the first time since its economic near-collapse, Greece is borrowing on the market, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the Eurogroup, has said that Greece's austerity efforts are “impressive”, according to Austria's Die Presse.

The European Commission wants to have EU-wide guarantees for bank deposits up to €100,000, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes. This would cover the assets of 95% of savings accounts in the EU, according to Michel Barnier, the commissioner for the internal market. Germany's savings banks will have to build expensive reserves to meet the new requirements, Handelsblatt writes.

The UK government is considering a permanent tax on the pay and profits of banks, the Guardian reports. It says Mark Hoban, the City minister, has given his strongest hint yet that banks could be hit with a financial activities tax on profits and pay of the kind recently suggested by the International Monetary Fund.

Libération has an interview with Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, in which he says that credit ratings agencies amplified market movements during the financial crisis. “It is probably opportune to not continue to have a global oligopoly of three agencies,” Trichet said. The European Commission is considering options for increasing diversity in the ratings market, including possibly creating a European ratings agency.

House prices in the UK may not recover for another ten years, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers reported in the Daily Telegraph. The reports says: “Housing is a risky asset that is not guaranteed to generate positive real returns in the future even though this has been the pattern in the past.”

The Guardian reports on proposals from the European Commission to allow countries to make up their own minds about whether to grown genetically modified (GM) crops. The paper says that the “rare instance of Brussels handing back power...will likely present Britain's government with a delicate decision; caught between a robust GM industry lobby and a vocal protest movement”.
 
The Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik has said that no genocide has taken place at Srebrenica, Nezavisne novine reports. He said that the Bosnian Serb Republic did not deny that a crime occurred in Srebrenica 15 years ago but that it was not genocide because women and children were not killed. “If genocide took place, then it was committed against the Serbian people of this region, where there was mass murder of women, children and the elderly,” he said during a memorial for Serbs killed around Srebrenica.

In Italy, 300 suspected members of the Calabrian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta, have been arrested. Some of those arrested were seized in the US. La Repubblica has the story.

Senior officials from the EU and Turkey are meeting in Istanbul today to discuss counter-terrorism co-operation and regional issues, writes Hürriyet Daily News.

Russian security services say they have broken up a cell of female suicide bombers, the International Herald Tribune reports.

Russia's energy giant Gazprom is trying to divide the consortium building the Nabucco pipeline, Die Presse writes, citing a report – not available online – by Germany's Handelsblatt. Gazprom is reported to have offered to RWE, a German company that is part of Nabucco, a place on the South Stream consortium. The two pipelines are direct competitors. The Süddeutsche Zeitung reports on the show-down as a personal struggle between Gerhard Schröder, a former German chancellor, and Joschka Fischer, his foreign minister, the latter advising Nabucco, the former South Stream.

Online editions of the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian report that BP has fitted a new containment cap on the leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.
 
Migration within the EU has become one of the main migratory movements in the developed world, Die Presse writes. A report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development published yesterday found that 44% of migrants in EU member states came from other EU countries.

The European Commission is proposing to simplify formalities for seasonal workers and for staff being transferred internationally within their firm, Handelsblatt writes.

German troops in Afghanistan are increasingly using heavy armour against the Taliban, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes. Much of the equipment is not the latest technology, and the Taliban are adapting their tactics.

An ex-UK diplomat has told a British inquiry that the UK government deliberately exaggerated the amount of weapons of mass destruction Iraq had before the US-led invasion of the country, writes De Volkskrant. It says Carne Ross, a diplomat who was responsible for the Middle East in the UK foreign office between 1997 and 2002, said the UK move mimicked that of the United States in order to justify the invasion and toppling of Saddam Hussein.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant against President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan on genocide charges, the Süddeutsche Zeitung writes. Al-Bashir had already been indicted for war crimes last year. He was re-elected earlier this year in a poll boycotted by the opposition.

Wouter Van Bellingen, a black city councillor in Sint-Niklaas in Belgium, is pushing a plan to rename the King Leopold II avenue in the city, writes De Morgen. Van Bellingen wants to rename the avenue because he says the former king and colonial ruler of the Congo does not deserve to be honoured. Under his rule of the colony, tens of thousands of Congolese were murdered or abused. De Morgen says there are discussions in many city councils across Flanders to rename streets after the king in wake of the 50th anniversary of the independence of Congo.  
 
The Helsinki Times writes that the Finnish capital suffered limited flooding yesterday.

Gazeta Wyborcza's lead story is the Swiss authorities' release of Roman Polanski, the Polish-born film director, who has been under arrest since last September facing extradition to the US to face charges of sexual assault on a minor.

Workers at Antwerp's GM Opel plant will be able to claim an early pension if they are 50 years old when the plant closes down at the end of this year, writes De Standaard. Joelle Milquet, federal minister of employment, is pushing for the measure to ease the financial strain and hardship many workers will face once they lose their jobs. Around 641 employees of the 2,600 currently working at the plant will qualify for the early pension.
 
The Times continues its serialisation of the memoirs of Peter Mandelson, the former business minister and European commissioner. Today's instalment “reveals” that cabinet colleagues of Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, did not believe that he could win the election.

Papers across Europe carry pictures of the Spanish football team's celebrations in Madrid following their victory in the World Cup final over the Netherlands. Amsterdam is preparing to host a celebratory parade for the Dutch football team, writes De Telegraaf. One million people are expected to cheer on the players. The team will visit Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and Queen Beatrix in The Hague before being taken by helicopter to Amsterdam for the parade.

The Irish Times says North Korea has cancelled a rare meeting with the American-led UN command that had been arranged to discuss the sinking of a South Korean warship earlier this year. Military officers were to meet at the Korean border village of Panmunjom this morning to discuss the sinking that killed 46 South Korean sailors.