The “Convention on the future of Europe”, which has just begun its work in Brussels, is discussed by Thomas Fuller, in the Herald Tribune (27/2), according to whom “the European political leaders have been convened to redistribute power in a new, enlarged Europe and to replace the complex and confused network of treaties that now governs the European Union”. The author of the article draws a parallel between the current situation of the old Continent and the “challenges” that the Americans had to face in Philadelphia, in 1787. “The European Convention writes Thomas Fuller will seek ways of distributing power between the big and small states, paying attention not to threaten the power of some more sceptical European national governments. The discussion has pitted those who want the EU to have a stronger executive arm perhaps including the direct or indirect election of the head of the executive against those who want power to be retained by the national governments”. Writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 27/2 the CDU deputy Wolfgang Schäuble comments on the reform of the EU, in an article with the title: “ The nation is well preserved in Europe“, in which he affirms that “ the key question of all the reforms is: who will decide in future on what?“: in other words, “ what will Europe have to decide on in future and what will remain of the authority of the member states? The reply to this question provides the population with the motive for the actuality of European unification“. “ The European national states, if they really want to satisfy their classic tasks and the hopes of their citizens argues Schäuble can only move towards greater cooperation. The nation and Europe condition each other reciprocally. The nation is not lost in Europe, but gains in security. Only if we bear in mind this concept of Europe and of the nation will the process of European unification produce good results“. Schäuble also affirms that “sovereignty does not pass to the Union, but is in fact subdivided between Europe and the national states.” He concludes that: “ A united Europe represents a decisive contribution to a better world in the 21st century, and it is just for this reason that the European nations may only be secure in Europe.” The refusal of a Moslem parent to have his children educated in a Catholic school, and the denunciation of the presumed sale of a girl below the age of consent by her Moroccan father for purposes of matrimony, have re-ignited the debate on the clash between cultures. According to El Pais of 24/02, what emerges from such cases is “ the lack on the part of some immigrants of any willingness to adapt to the laws, regulations and social norms [of their host country] ; this is a time bomb for democracy, pluralism and the open society.” Writing in the same Spanish daily Mikel Azurmendi is of the view that “ democracy is not only the state of law, but above all a cultural system in which are integrated thousands of immigrants who do what they want in their private life without detriment to their own dignity and their own rights“. In ABC of 26/02 José Chamizo maintains the need for “these questions to be treated with a dose of good sense, because we are sitting on a powder keg and, without intending to do so, may provoke xenophobia“. “The sorcerer’s apprentices of the Olympics”. That’s the title of an article published on the front page of Le Monde of 27/2. It is dedicated to an analysis of the Winter Olympics that have just ended at Salt Lake City, clouded by the controversies that arose after the ascertainment of various cases of doping, with consequent disqualifications, withdrawal of medals and their reassignment to other competitors. The act “most pregnant with consequences” of the last Olympic Games, maintains Gilles van Kote, “did not result from the attitude of a judge, perhaps unduly open to influence, or of athletes tempted to have recourse to illicit substances. Rather, it should be sought within the Olympic institution itself, the international Olympic Committee”, which “has made remarkable efforts to stem doping and to increase trasparency” but nonetheless took “a hasty decision, under the pressure a considerable one of the American and Canadian media” and “threw the games into an unprecedented sporting chaos”.
