What do the following stories have in common?
1. France has started to block trains from Italy to intercept illegal migrants from North Africa.
2. A Eurosceptic party has made big gains in the Finnish general election. Read more
Another eurozone country has been humbled by its banks. Earlier this week, Portugal’s banks were threatening a bond-buyers’ go-slow unless the caretaker government sought financial help from other European Union countries. After being beaten up in Wednesday’s debt auction, Lisbon has waved the white flag. The country’s caretaker leaders have now admitted that Portugal will need outside help. Read more
Portugal’s prime minister has resigned on the eve of a European Union summit that is supposed to move towards a “grand bargain” to bolster the eurozone and strengthen its crisis prevention ability. The currency bloc is in a bind. Lex’s Edward Hadas and Vincent Boland discuss just how bad it is and what might come next. Read more
We have a live Twitter #hashtag chat with Cynthia O’Murchu, FT reporter, on our EU structural funds special investigation. Read more
By Jo Johnson, British MP and former editor of the FT’s Lex column
As it’s prediction season, here goes… My crystal ball, for what it is worth, foretells political and economic union between France and Germany, perhaps within the next 12-24 months. Europe needs a gamechanger, one that creates an insurmountable firebreak against the speculators. Crises have historically been the motor of European integration and a full union, much like the panicky one Britain offered France in June 1940, might look tempting. It would provide for joint organs of defence, foreign, financial and economic policies, finally fulfilling the founding fathers’ dream of “ever closer union”. Read more
Brussels bureau chief Peter Spiegel says Ireland and Portugal face a grilling on their budgets at the meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels, and that pressure is building on these countries to take rescue aid, as fear of debt contagion across the eurozone increases.
The FT’s “Saving the Euro” investigation will culminate in a live “hashtag” chat on Twitter between 1pm and 2pm (GMT) this afternoon with the author, Tony Barber, former Brussels bureau chief. Read more
“Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises.”
Penned more than three decades ago, Jean Monnet’s insight on the European Union, which the French statesman was so instrumental in founding, has certainly stood the test of time. Read more
In Europe’s capitals they still talk of the evening when George Papandreou, Greek prime minister, confessed to his fellow leaders that his nation was corrupt. “He was very impressive and very honest. He basically said: ‘My country is a corrupt country from A to Z,’” recalls one European Union policymaker present at the dinner in Brussels on December 10 2009 where Mr Papandreou bared Athens’ economic soul. Read more
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Peter Spiegel is the FT's Brussels bureau chief. He returned to the FT in August 2010 after spending five years covering foreign policy and national security issues from Washington for the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, focusing on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He first joined the FT in 1999 covering business regulation and corporate crime in its Washington bureau, before spending four years covering military affairs and the defence industry in London and Washington.
Joshua Chaffin is one of the FT's EU correspondents, covering areas including policies on trade, the environment and energy. He has worked in the FT's Brussels bureau since late 2008 and before that was an FT correspondent in New York and Washington DC. 
Alex Barker is EU correspondent, covering the single market, financial regulation and competition. He was formerly an FT political correspondent in the UK and joined the FT in 2005.
James Fontanella-Khan is FT's Brussels correspondent, covering media, telecom and internet regulation as well as justice, employment and social affairs and its impact on eastern Europe. He was formerly an FT correspondent in India. He joined the FT in 2006. 
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