European press review

Spanish papers fear an ecological disaster from the stricken tanker Prestige, while others eye the Nato summit in Prague. The leader of Turkey's pro-Islamic governing party defends his country's European credentials, and there are fears political correctness may hamper efforts to stop anti-Semitic attacks in France. Meanwhile, the aftermath of the Moscow theatre siege is putting pressure on Russia's media.

The wreck of the Prestige

"Is anyone at the helm?" asks Madrid's El Pais as four separate slicks of thick fuel oil from the sunken tanker Prestige approach Spain's northern coast.

But the rudder the paper has in mind belongs to the country's ship of state.

"It was last Wednesday," it recalls, "that the Prestige started leaking fuel oil into the sea 28 miles off Cape Finisterre", and the Madrid government, the paper adds, "has taken one week to wake-up".

We must be tougher in defence of our coasts.

El Periodico

"There was no-one at the helm of the Prestige as it drifted" in the Atlantic, the paper notes, "but who is at the country's helm in this emergency?".

Barcelona's El Periodico says that "there is nothing new" about the tanker's fate and the pollution it has caused, and urges "a comprehensive overhaul of all the measures introduced to date to protect the coasts of Spain and of Europe in general".

"In Galicia as in Brussels," it says, "we must be tougher in defence of our coasts".

Alliance in search of a role

With seven new members expected to be invited to join Nato when its summit opens officially in Prague on Thursday, Austria's Der Standard takes the view that enlargement and the concept of a response force to deal with terrorists and rogue states, will enable Nato, as the paper puts it, to "take a major step towards its new identity and future global role".

In the paper's opinion, Nato will also be instrumental to the success or otherwise of the European Union's future defence component. "Should the EU ever really manage to set up its own defence and security policy," it says, "this will only have been made possible with substantial help from the alliance."

The paper expects the traditional concept of neutrality will be dealt a blow when Sweden and Finland - as it believes - eventually join the alliance. "The last remaining neutral countries in the EU," it says, "will realise that neutrality has become a constitutional curiosity."

Nato lives, and Europeans should be jolly glad of it.

Der Standard

"Nato lives," the paper concludes, "and Europeans should be jolly glad of it."

The German Der Tagesspiegel ponders where a new Nato response force would stand with regard to international law.

As the paper sees it, "there are only three situations warranting military intervention".

Taking military action against terrorists, it says, "requires the approval of the state on whose territory they have sought refuge, as is America's case in the Philippines at the present moment".

"Intervention against the will of a state," the paper points out, "is only justified if authorized by the Security Council - or in self-defence."

"It is true," it concedes, "that a state does not have to be attacked to have the right to defend itself". But "pre-emptive self-defence is only allowed when an attack is imminent", and "this is where the problems begin for Nato's response force," the paper concludes.

Knocking at Europe's door

In an interview with the French Paris-Match, the leader of Turkey's new ruling Justice and Development Party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, replies to those who question his country's European credentials.

Mr Erdogan, who is on a European tour to press Ankara's bid for EU membership, says that the arguments advanced by such people "would have you believe that the European Union is made for Christians".

But Turkey "set course for Europe 40 years ago" and is a member of the OECD, Nato, and the Council of Europe, he says. "So it is wrong to say that it does not participate in European affairs."

The acceptance into the EU of a 99% Muslim country like Turkey, Mr Erdogan says, "would disprove Samuel P Huntington's theory of the Clash of Civilizations", while on the other hand rejection "would be tantamount to confirming it".

French fear and loathing

An anti-Semitic attack in Paris leads the French Nouvel Observateur to criticise the approach of the authorities and media to such incidents.

"Once again," the paper says, "young cretins... have attacked other youths to cries of 'dirty Jew', which we had thought banished from France's memory."

"Once again," it adds, the reports of the incident "seemed concerned first and foremost with playing it down," which leaves French Jews "with the feeling that they are poorly protected, poorly defended and poorly regarded".

Is it not a new kind of racism to treat Arabs as if they were irresponsible children who need forgiving in advance?

Nouvel Observateur

Both the authorities and the media, the paper believes, are "obsessed by the fear of finding out that the culprits are North Africans," which it says, "is not always the case".

And the paper wonders if it is not "a new kind of racism" to treat Arabs "as if they were irresponsible children" who "need forgiving in advance".

"What victims deserve - and the North Africans are often victims themselves - is compassion, not condescension."

A pardon for the press

Russian newspapers express unanimous support for the journalist community's appeal to President Vladimir Putin to veto legislative amendments imposing curbs on media coverage of terrorism.

The mass-circulation Moskovskiy Komsomolets says the restrictions "herald the introduction of government control over the press," adding that "any attempts to force rules of conduct on journalists 'from the top' are bound to have the opposite effect, making any unbiased coverage impossible".

The broadsheet Izvestiya uses even stronger words with regard to the amendments, which it believes, transform "the laws on the media and on fighting terrorism from liberal into half-totalitarian ones".

The paper links the unusually fast passage of the bills through both houses of parliament to the Moscow theatre siege, which claimed dozens of lives: "The lawmakers' haste is understandable - the amendments were an indirect excuse for the elite, which was reluctant to be held morally responsible for what happened."

Meanwhile, the heavyweight broadsheet Nezavismaya Gazeta suggests the whole affair may have carefully orchestrated.

"The president gets a chance to pull off a good PR trick," it says. "The president is facing a difficult choice - to look like a head of state who effectively introduces censorship in his country in the eyes of society (especially Western), or to remain a democrat in spite of anything."

After "two rather unsuccessful political weeks" for Mr Putin it would not hurt him "to score a few political points" if the "publicity move" worked.

The presence of government-controlled media outlets among the signatories of the appeal makes Nezavismaya Gazeta all the more suspicious.

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