European press review

European leaders feature widely in Friday's press, from analysis of the new British opposition leader to criticism of the EU for not adopting a sterner approach to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In Spain, excitement over the royal engagement begins to wear thin, and one paper voices little sympathy for a Monaco princess' attempt to leave the spotlight.

The Swiss daily Le Temps has praise for Britain's new opposition leader Michael Howard, following his unchallenged election as head of the Conservative Party.

It calls Howard "supremely intelligent" and "a good tactician, with a nimble and cutting turn of phrase", and says it expects that the "pure-blood Thatcherite" will "finally make life difficult for Tony Blair".

Labour leadership

But the paper's predictions for Mr Howard and his party are less optimistic. The Tories are not expected to win the next election, the paper says.

And after this, Mr Howard "will be too old to become the first Jewish prime minister since Disraeli".

The subject of an apparent rift between the two has become a "perennial favourite" in London. International Herald Tribune

Labour Party leaders Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were also in the spotlight, as "talk of a growing feud flared anew", says the Paris-based International Herald Tribune.

The paper says the subject of an apparent rift between the two has become a "perennial favourite" in London.

This comes, the paper says, after Mr Brown's request to become a member of the party's ruling National Executive Committee was turned down.

Mr Brown's recent "alarm bells" about the European Union also make him appear, at times, more closely aligned with the "eurosceptic right" than with Mr Blair, the paper adds.

EU-Russia summit

EU leaders meeting in Rome also come under scrutiny. The Russian web site Gazeta.ru expresses little surprise over the proceedings at the EU-Russia summit.

"It was a difficult summit for the Russian president," the web site says, noting that Mr Putin was asked about the Yukos affair and the possibility of the "further persecution" of businessmen in Russia.

There could easily have been a little more steadfastness and faithfulness to principles. Der Standard

Austria's Der Standard disagrees, saying EU leaders adopted too much of a kid-glove approach to Mr Putin.

"There could easily have been a little more steadfastness and faithfulness to principles," the paper says, if only because Russia's "brutal actions" toward Yukos oil boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky "have a clearly anti-Semitic background".

Following EU President Silvio Berlusconi's defence of Mr Putin's actions, the paper says it is looking forward to the New Year.

"From that point on," it says, Mr Berlusconi "will no longer be authorised to speak for the EU".

"Perhaps then he'll quieten down a bit - which would be good for him and good for Europe," the paper adds.

It does concede, however, that Mr Berlusconi "is right in one instance: Russia and the EU are of course more closely connected today than ever before".

The Russian web site Strana.ru is keen to stress the significance of Mr Putin's trip to Italy and his planned "tete-a-tete" with French President Jacques Chirac.

The "parameters of Russia's foreign policy" have thus been laid out, the web site says.

Wedding bells

Finally, the Spanish media's excitement over the announcement of Crown Prince Felipe's engagement to TV news presenter Letizia Ortiz prompts somewhat of a backlash from two Madrid dailies.

El Pais says the "the weight of flattery" from some state media is "excessive", particularly on the part of Rtve, the network that is about to lose a presenter and gain a princess.

This glossy magazine nobility has little cause to complain. Tribune de Geneve

El Mundo agrees, saying that "the level of adulation, obsequiousness and servility was beginning to reach intolerable levels".

However, the paper also had a kindly note about the couple, saying their "spontaneity" on screen helped neutralise "the devastating effect of so much flattery and sugary praise".

Another European royal's attempt to leave the spotlight is welcomed to an extent by a commentary in the Swiss Tribune de Geneve.

The article says a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights on Princess Caroline of Monaco's request for people to stop photographing her in public could help harmonise an area "with so much contradiction" between different countries.

At the same time, however, the article says it has little sympathy for the princess, as Monaco's royal family has sought to attract media attention "to sell the image of the Principality to the wealthy".

"This glossy magazine nobility has little cause to complain today of the paparazzi whose frenzy they stirred up in the past," it says.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.