Today's front pages

Portugal is facing the prospect of early elections after PM Pedro Passos Coelho’s decision to raise employee social security contributions, a measure that provoked mass protests on Saturday. President Aníbal Cavaco Silva has convened a September 21 meeting of the State Council, which brings together the country’s highest officials. The Lisbon daily reports that the prospect of early elections would be a worst-case scenario for the business community, which is urging the government to revoke the measure.

Entrepreneurs reject elections to avoid worsening crisis – Diário económico

Industrial employment fell by 6% between the first quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2011, a decrease offset however by an increase in employment in the tertiary sector and in government services. After the closure of the Renault plant in Vilvoorde in 1997 and Opel in Antwerp in 2010, Belgians fear the possible closure of the Ford plant in Genk.

Belgian industry melts – De Standaard

Known as the “enfant terrible of traditionalism”, Madrid regional president Esperanza Aguirre, an influential member of the ruling centre-right People’s Party (PP), resigned on September 17 in a surprise announcement. In a thirty year career, Aguirre led the conservative wing of the PP and was a huge vote-getter for the party in Madrid. She was the first woman politician in Spain to be seen as a possible future Prime minister.

Liberal Spain loses leading light – El Mundo

Worried by the likely creation of a new tax on financial income, rich Europeans are withdrawing their money en masse from Switzerland. Swiss bank UBS expects some 25 billion euros in withdrawals. The tax is part of an agreement between Switzerland and Germany, currently being ratified in Berlin.

Rich flee Switzerland – Financial Times Deutschland

According to a study conducted by the newspaper, refugee children arriving in Sweden with their parents are struggling to fit in. A "setback for the country," notes the daily. In higher education, employment, and income, they are well below the average for their age, while the crime rate is much higher. Sweden is the European country that takes in the largest number of refugees.

This is what happened to refugee children – Dagens Nyheter

The assets of the bankrupt Amber Gold investment fund are said to be much higher than previously thought and may amount to 100 million zlotys (€25m). Nevertheless, some 6,600 people who lost up to 500 milllion zlotys (€125m) in fraudulent gold investments will be able to recover only a fraction of the invested money.

A golden business: they will get back between 10 and 20 per cent – Gazeta Wyborcza

In a blow to "Magyar capitalism" as promoted by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a court in Budapest has cancelled the tender awarding a fourth mobile license to a consortium of Hungarian public companies, due to serious irregularities in the adjudication.

The mobile state out of order – Népszabadság