European press review

The European Union summit, chilly US-Russian relations, the foot-and-mouth crisis, local elections in Germany and Austria and the fighting in Macedonia all provide Europe's dailies with plenty of food for thought and comment.

France the EU spoilsport

Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung berates France for having blocked progress at the EU summit in Stockholm for domestic political reasons.

A schedule for liberalising the energy markets in the European Union failed to be adopted because, it says, neither French President Jacques Chirac nor his rival for next year's presidential elections, current Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, wanted to give each other any advantage.

"Of course all governments must take account of their domestic politics," the paper says, "but it is an unpleasant development when France no longer generates any European impulses, and even wrecks initiatives that serve the community..."

Kicking the fallen bear

Two Budapest dailies draw different conclusions from what they call the latest US-Russian "spy-war".

The conservative, pro-government Magyar Nemzet, which calls this relationship "cold peace", describes the latest exchange as a "tragicomic replay" of the Cold War.

The paper sees the expulsion of Russian diplomats as "a last kick of the bear that is already down" and raises some concern about the possible negative impact on Russian reforms.

The centre-left independent, Nepszabadsag agrees: "The Cold War is dead," it says, but adds that "its spectre keeps haunting us".

"The USA may treat Moscow as a fourth-class power, but countries on the old continent - Europe - are far too close to it to ignore its roar," the paper says.

"Russia deserves more respect," is how the paper sums up Europe's view, adding: "Europe clearly does not like spectres."

Foot-and-mouth 'shambles'

A front-page headline in France's leading daily Le Monde says that foot-and-mouth disease in Britain is out of control.

The paper points out that according to one estimate about 25 million animals may have to be slaughtered.

It says that, compared to this, the crisis of 1967, in which 430,000 animals were lost, seems like "a kind of picnic".

The paper adds that Prime Minister Tony Blair appears to have taken control of the fight against the disease, relieving his embattled agriculture minister.

"What is now under way," it concludes, "is a real race between the eradicators and the virus."

France's Le Figaro describes the foot-and-mouth disease situation in France as "a shambles".

It says contradictory accounts of how the virus could have spread to a second farm reveal serious flaws in the way France is fighting the epidemic.

"As a result," the paper says, "hopes that Brussels will next Wednesday lift the embargo on French livestock are fading".

It warns that in this case the economic consequences for France would be very serious.

German winners and losers

The prevailing view in the German press of Sunday's elections in two states, Rhineland-Palatinate and Baden-Wuerttemberg, is that the big parties have come out winners, the small ones losers.

Hamburg's Die Welt says that both the Social Democratic Party of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and the opposition Christian Democratic Union, or CDU, fared well, though not always as well as either party had hoped.

"The big ones win," it says.

"The two small parties," it adds, referring to Chancellor Schroeder's coalition partner, the Greens, and to the liberal Free Democrats, "will be unexpectedly disappointed by the election result".

Berlin's Die Tageszeitung also says that the Greens have been unable to halt their downward slide.

"By comparison," it says, "the Social Democratic Party is the big winner in both states."

The far-right Republican party, which is no longer represented in the Baden-Wuerttemberg state parliament, "fell at the 5% hurdle", it adds.

Austrian winners and losers

Vienna's two main newspapers, Die Presse and Der Standard both agree that Sunday's local elections in the Austrian capital boosted the left.

"A clear lurch to the left," is what Die Presse says happened in "the second most important election in the republic".

"The result of the Vienna elections is a great victory for the SPO", the Austrian Socialists, says Der Standard.

Both papers also concur that the elections marked a setback for the right-wing Freedom Party of Joerg Haider.

"Joerg Haider's anti-Semitic populism has ended in a defeat," says Der Standard.

"The Freedom Party can at best console itself like this," says Die Presse: "Their loss of votes is not quite as bad as it had threatened to be until recently."

War in Macedonia

"Tetovo woke up this morning to all-out war," says a front-page headline in Belgium's Le Soir.

The article that follows gives a vivid account of the start of the offensive by the Macedonian army against Albanian rebels dug in on a mountain.

"At seven o'clock in the morning," the paper says, "artillery, mortars and rockets fired from helicopters made the mountain... tremble."

It says infantry soldiers, who were sent into battle a little later, were very nervous and included some reservists.

"The Macedonian army launches its biggest offensive against the Albanian rebels," says a headline of Madrid's El Pais under a front-page photograph of Macedonian soldiers running to take up positions as they advance upon villages held by the rebels.

"The Balkans again," comments another Madrid daily, Diario 16.

"The Balkans continue to be a very unstable place," it says, "where the culture of war is still too deeply rooted in a population that must learn to cohabit in diversity."

The European press review is compiled by BBC Monitoring from internet editions of the main European newspapers and some early printed editions.