Eurotopics.net

In France, the string of nationwide strikes and demonstrations against the government's pension reform plans continued on Tuesday. According to the authorities, 1.3 million people took to the streets across the country. Long-distance and local trains were cancelled, teachers staged walkouts and refineries were blocked. Where is this all going?

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has adopted an unusually sharp tone against the West. Led by the US, the Western countries have contained, encircled and suppressed China, he said on the sidelines of the National People's Congress in Beijing, according to state news agency Xinhua. Commentators discuss what the remarks portend.

After 15 years of negotiations, the UN has agreed on protective measures for the world's oceans. Under the High Seas Treaty at least 30 percent of the world's ocean is to be put under protection by the end of the decade. Biodiversity in the high seas - in areas beyond state jurisdiction - is to be preserved by means of internationally binding measures. Commentators wonder whether this will be enough.

The weekend was marked by large demonstrations and also rioting in Athens, Thessaloniki and other Greek cities in reaction to a train crash in which 57 people were killed. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis initially blamed human error for the accident, but later apologised in a Facebook post for the dilapidated state of the railway.

After two five-year mandates, Czech President Miloš Zeman's term in office ends on Wednesday. Zeman, who was first a member of the Social Democratic Party but later switched to the centre-left Party of Civic Rights, was one of the defining figures in Prague after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, along with his predecessors Václav Havel and Václav Klaus. But in the commentaries there is not much mourning over his departure.