European press review

Newspapers sound the alarm over the state of European politics in the wake of the killing of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, and point to worrying trends across the continent.

Business as usual?

Below the surface of a seemingly broad consensus and political correctness... the cauldron is simmering ever more strongly

Der Standard

"European politics cannot continue with business as usual," warns Vienna's Der Standard.

Issues like immigration, crime, globalisation and EU enlargement, it says, are making people across the continent feel threatened and insecure.

"Below the surface of a seemingly broad consensus and political correctness, as represented by the established parties, the cauldron is simmering ever more strongly."

Hamburg's Die Welt views the outward signs of this deep-seated unease. "There is a new hunger for identity and stability," it says, "for borders and barriers, for order-based values, for the strict, protective state."

The political centre, the paper adds, is drifting to the right. But while this drift is legitimate, it says, it is "imperative that it should remain moderate".

Threat

Traditional politics has failed many people in Europe

The Independent

"What a strange climate has come over Europe!", says the title of a commentary in Switzerland's Le Temps.

The paper places the Fortuyn murder and the inroads made by the French far right alongside the rise of Italy's Northern League and Tuesday's news from Denmark that the Liberal-led coalition has agreed to tough demands from Pia Kjaersgaard's far-right DPP party on curbing immigration.

According to the paper, populist leaders in each country have a common political project at the heart of which is "national preference".

And it warns that "besides the xenophobia that it spreads", the populist blueprint, "with its talk of raising national borders again, poses a major threat to the construction of Europe".

Fragility

Pim Fortuyn was not an enemy, but rather a child of our new value system

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Britain's Independent urges the Netherlands and Europe as a whole to ponder what it calls "the roots of Fortuyn's unlikely appeal".

The story of Pim Fortuyn highlights the "friction" underlying Dutch society, it says, and is a reminder of the "fragility of even the most apparently benign modern societies".

"Traditional politics has failed many people in Europe," the paper adds, saying it must "tackle this failure to reach people who feel dispossessed".

Under the title "Lost innocence", Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung says Fortuyn's murder signals the death of what it calls the "fairy tale of the Netherlands as a bastion of happiness".

The truth is, the average European is afraid

Ukraine's Den

The attack was unexpected, the paper says, but even before it came, "something had already come apart at the seams" in Dutch society. Widespread disillusionment had enabled Fortuyn to attract "the flock of the dissatisfied" and offer them "an escape valve".

And the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung says Pim Fortuyn, as "Europe's first completely post-modern populist", was "not an enemy, but rather a child of our new value system".

The paper says the emergence of figures like Fortuyn can be blamed on what it calls "a paternalist style of politics that presumptuously believes it has a duty to protect people from certain unpleasant truths".

Fear

Further east, the killing of Fortuyn and Le Pen's showing in the French elections lead Ukraine's Den to question what it says is the common assumption that the "average European" is "happy".

Even Europeans with entirely liberal views are more and more concerned by the growing incidence of conflicts surrounding immigrants, which are increasingly leading to bloodshed

Vremya Novostey

"The truth is, the average European is afraid," it says - afraid of "Third World migration", the "intransigence" of Brussels bureaucracy and the "spectre of terrorism".

In searching for solutions, the average European then "falls for the easy answers offered by the likes of Le Pen, Joerg Haider or [Russian far-right leader] Zhirinovsky", the paper comments.

Neither do the politicians escape Den's criticism. It describes them as afraid of their own electorates and struggling to find answers to today's problems.

They are urged to offer "flexible solutions" to what the paper terms Europe's "new afflictions". Without this, the ultra-right will win one victory after another, it warns.

Stability?

Meanwhile, Russia's Izvestiya pulls no punches in its assessment of Fortuyn, describing him as the latest in a long line of "marginal" figures intent on political opportunism.

What is more, "there is an unpleasant feeling that figures of this kind... are starting to tire of the relative stability established after May 1945", the paper says.

Moskovskiy Komsomolets dwells on what it sees as the irony of Fortuyn's death. "All his life, Fortuyn harboured a fierce hatred for Muslims and didn't like women, but came to be the victim of a white man."

The mainstream Vremya Novostey strikes a similar tone, observing that "this politician, who was himself accused of advocating extremism, became the victim of violence and intolerance".

The paper goes on to warn of the longer-term consequences of Fortuyn's death, saying there is every chance he will become an "icon of sorts" for European ultra-right-wingers, a "martyr to the cause".

And it expresses concern over Europe's "apparent shift towards the right" which it says is unlikely to end with Fortuyn's death.

"The success of parties similar to Fortuyn's didn't come out of nowhere," it says. "Even Europeans with entirely liberal views are more and more concerned by the growing incidence of conflicts surrounding immigrants, which are increasingly leading to bloodshed."

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