Eurotopics.net

After years of negotiations, Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenka have adopted the 28 'Union Programmes' in Moscow, which are intended to promote the harmonisation of their two countries' economic and financial policies. Commentators see this as the first step towards the creation of a joint state and point out that Europe has also played a role in promoting this process.

Pope Francis visited Hungary on Sunday on the occasion of the International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest. He held a large open-air mass and also met certain government representatives including Prime Minister Viktor Orbán - albeit on a rather informal basis - and then travelled on to Slovakia. Commentators are unanimous that Orbán won't be able to make much hay out of this brief visit.

El Salvador has become the first country in the world to approve bitcoin as legal tender. To this end it has launched a digital payment and exchange system (or cyberwallet) called Chivo based on the cryptocurrency last week. The World Bank, IMF and rating agencies are very critical of the move, and there have also been protests among the country's population. Reactions from the press are more mixed.

Saturday will mark the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Together with the retaliatory measures by the US and other Western states, they are considered a major historical turning point. For many observers this anniversary is above all about open wounds given the West has made little progress on legal proceedings against the culprits and not banished the threat of jihadism.

In Guinea, the military ousted the country's president, Alpha Condé, on Sunday. Many people celebrated Condé's overthrowal on the streets, but the UN and EU have strongly condemned the coup. Condé came to power in 2010 in the first free elections since Guinea achieved independence in 1958, and was considered a stabilising beacon of hope. However, he has recently come under fire for authoritarianism and human rights violations.