Plans for a European economic government fail to please the markets and pose a problem for the Dutch government. What drives the mysterious motorway sniper? Facial hair goes Viking – shave to be different.

Euro-gov to save the euro
Today’s newspapers agree on the story of the day - and that is, as de Volkskrant writes, the plans for “one single government for the euro” dreamed up by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The opening of the article in de Volkskrant explains: “Germany and France want Brussels to have much more power. They believe the euro crisis needs to be resolved by means of a centralised economic policy. Therefore, the 17-country eurozone should have its own economic government.”

Trouw tells us that Mr Sarkozy and Ms Merkel will present the detailed version of their plan in February 2012. Ahead of that, the two leaders’ first concrete measure will likely be a special tax on financial transactions, designed to combat speculation and short-term profits. This will be followed in 2013 by a European corporation tax as a first step towards tax harmonisation.

All this is not what the financial markets really want right now. They’d like the introduction of euro bonds, for example. But the French president and, more particularly, the German chancellor are not keen. Why? As de Volkskrant tells us, the issue of euro bonds would “cost countries like Germany and the Netherlands billions each year in additional interest, while countries in southern Europe would be better off.”

The Franco-German plan is, indeed, something for the longer term, and the markets reacted with disappointment at the non-immediate nature of the proposals. The euro even dropped one whole US dollar cent in value after the announcement.

Nether-Turtle?
So, what’s the Dutch – politicians – take on all this? Inside de Volkskrant we’re told that Prime Minister Mark Rutte – under fire in parliament on Tuesday for his statements following the last bailout plan for Greece – wasn’t prepared to comment too much yesterday. However, de Volkskrant says he indicated “he didn’t feel too inclined towards the transfer of sovereignty from the Netherlands to Europe” – then quotes him saying, “Countries that stick to the rules [governing the euro], such as the Netherlands, shouldn’t do that.”

The PM didn’t say much more on the issue because, as an editorial in Trouw points out, the Sarkozy-Merkel plans don’t make things easy for his minority conservative-Christian Democrat government. Like some kind of euro-sceptic turtle, the Dutch government appears to be: “pulling back much too far into its shell – under pressure from the party that has formally agreed to support it, the Freedom Party [of Geert Wilders], and from what has now become extremely anti-European public opinion.”

Trouw’s commentator wonders whether this is a sustainable attitude: “If we want to keep the euro – and the Netherlands benefits greatly from the single currency – then we need to rectify the errors made in the past. We need to accept that [...] policy has to be coordinated.”

Even the editorial in the euro-sceptical De Telegraaf accepts that while Sarkozy’s and Merkel’s proposals would have been unimaginable a year ago “the debt crisis has changed everything.” But, predictably, it sounds a warning note: “The partial transfer of the financial autonomy of our country is a major step [...]. Those who relinquish independence will find it difficult to get it back again.”

Highway sniper
Monday’s Press Review touched on the spate of shootings at cars on some of this country’s motorways. As the papers report today, there were more shattered car windows yesterday.

Free commuter daily Metro leads today with the headline “Highway gunman gets kicks from sensation”. Inside the paper there’s a map showing where the incidents have taken place and words of wisdom from two forensic psychologists.

One of the psychologists, Stefan Bogaerts, tells the paper that perpetrators of this type of crime – as with the youths who killed a woman in 2005 when they dropped stones from bridge over a motorway – are seldom consciously intent on causing physical harm. In the case of the youths, they later said they were merely bored.

One thing that is likely to be a factor with the motorway sniper, says Bogaerts, is the sensation: “Shooting at a car, then hearing the incident reported on the radio a couple of hours later, that’s exciting.”

So far the authorities have had no luck finding the person(s) responsible for the shootings, which appear to involve an air rifle. No one’s been able to provide a description because no one appears to have seen the sniper. Motorway cameras, it turns out, aren’t hooked up to recording devices (one MP is now calling for this to made possible). So, will this person be caught? If anything, Metro says, that might happen because they can’t keep their mouth shut. In other words, they’ll boast to someone.

In the meantime, whoever it is should perhaps be hoping to get caught sooner rather than later; as long as no one has been injured or killed, the punishment will be relatively light. One of the youths who ‘unintentionally’ killed the 30 year-old woman driver with their ‘bored’ stone-throwing exploits was jailed for six years.

Beards are in – so shave it off
Today’s de Volkskrant tells those of us who had not yet noticed that “The beard has become mainstream. In fact, there’s not been this much facial hair about since the 1970s.”

The article reports that back in the early 1970s a beard was a sign of creativity and ‘leftishness’, of having a progressive attitude to life. It then faded away, its continued existence being left in the hands/on the faces of “religious fanatics and old-school gay bears”. The author goes on to tell us that he first noted the return of the beard in the 21st century when visiting Copenhagen. What he saw was no a longer a mere five o’clock shadow or the designer stubble of the 1990s. No, “No Che Guevara goatees; these were beards with character. Viking beards!”

In fact, he writes, there are now too many facially-haired men around for his liking. At a recent European fashion fair he encountered so many beards that he shaved his off as soon as he got home: “There’s a limit to the uniformity a person is prepared to conform to, so that was it, out came the razor.”