“ We need to listen to people if the EU is ever to have a comprehensible Constitution“: that’s the suggestion of I. Méndez di Vigo, member of the Presidium of the Convention for the future of Europe. Writing in the Spanish daily ABC of 28/2 Méndez di Vigo declares that the decision-making mechanism needs to be reformed, because the “ old diplomatic method has reached its end“. The process of the reform of the European Union, in the view of another Spanish daily, La Vanguardia of 1/3 is “ an exciting process “. Now “ there’s an opportunity to render more democratic, transparent and effective a range of structures that seem fairly incomprehensible and abstruse to the normal European citizen“. Writing in the Catholic weekly Alfa ed Omega Cardinal Antonio-Maria Rouco Varela, archbishop of Madrid, recalls the Christian roots of Europe: “ It would be a mistake to ignore, avoid or obstruct the contribution of Christians to the construction of the true Europe of the spirit. And the relativistic claim that seeks to impose its fragmentary vision of European culture through the theory of an undifferentiated multiculturalism would also be extraordinarily disquieting.“ The aggravation of the Middle East conflict, with the tragic escalation of deaths, violence, terrorist attacks and military retaliations, monopolizes the attention of the main international dailies. “A new cycle of violence claims tens of victims in Israel”, headlines Le Monde of 5/3. “Forced to hate”, is the title of the editorial signed by Dominique Quinio in La Croix ( 4/3): “For months the article says , whenever a new stage in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has begun, analysis has been baffled by the fatal spiral of terrorist attacks and reprisals. Revenge fuels revenge, an apparently inexhaustible raw material. Who began, this time round? The Palestinian kamikaze who exploded the bomb in front of the road-block on the West Bank, or the Israeli army that circled and attacked the refugee camps? (…). Is it so far away, today, the total war that Ariel Sharon claims to be sparing his people, if on the same day several of his troops are killed in a military road-block and numerous civilians massacred in an ultra-Orthodox quarter of Jerusalem? Is total war so far away when not only activists, but ordinary inhabitants are killed in the Palestinian refugee camps?”. “The Arab-Israeli battle has reached the ‘point of no return'”, is the gloomy conclusion of the Herald Tribune of 6/3. Even after days of lethal frontal attacks, comment Lee Hockstader and Daniel Williams, “there are clear signals that both parties were ready to engage in even fiercer combat”. The new law on immigration as a dress rehearsal for the forthcoming elections for the Chancellorship is the focus of attention of the German press in recent days. Thus in an article with the title “The general rehearsal” published in the weekly Spiegel of 4/3 and signed by Stefan Berg, Petra Bornhöft, Horand Knaup, Sven Röbel, Christoph Schulte and Gabor Steingart, we read that “ Schröder wants to present himself for a second time as an all-purpose Chancellor, who wants perforce to make people accept this law too… everything must go forward in a modern and humane manner: as much for immigration as for the labour market and for Germany in general. Schröder wants to attract the middle-class centre“. Quite different, on the other hand, is “ the message of Stoiber, that is addressed at the conservative elite troops, who hope for a more rigid course: in immigration policy, in unemployment, and for Germany in general“; so, the authors of the article argue “ a triumph in the vote of 22 March would represent a sign for the electorate that in Germany the government still governs and will continue to reform“. The same issue is treated in the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 4/3. In a comment signed by Johannes Leithäuser, we read: “ when in the debates in the Bundestag the findings of opinion polls are cited more often that the contents of a draft law, that means that the electoral battle has already been joined“.
