European press review

The shock of the killing of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh reverberates in the editorial pages of Friday's European papers.

Germany's Frankfurter Rundschau sees the killing as the most painful event in Sweden's recent history after the murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986.

"Anna Lindh, who was almost unchallenged as a possible successor of Prime Minister Persson, represented the ideal Swedish politician: able to integrate, close to the people, casually sophisticated," the paper says.

Anna Lindh will be remembered far beyond Sweden Der Standard

It believes that after Palme's death, Sweden failed to realize that "the carefully cultivated Scandinavian seclusion and the mysterious cohesiveness of Swedish society... had become a deceptive facade".

Austria's Der Standard praises Lindh's European vision.

"Anna Lindh," it says, "tried to make people less afraid, and to enhance - with optimism but also in a good internationalist tradition - her country's chances in the construction of the common European peace project."

For this, it adds, she will be remembered "far beyond Sweden".

Euro vote

For Italy's La Repubblica, Lindh brought to European politics "a freshness that induced one to dream of a thinning of the excessive male ranks in favour of a greater female presence."

"Her commitment and her naturalness were striking," the paper says.

Under the heading "A crime that could bring Sweden into the euro", the Spanish El Mundo points out that Lindh was "regarded as the successor to Prime Minister Persson, whose political future will be played out this Sunday" in the euro referendum.

Sweden's open society has become the target of an attack which sprung from nowhere Berliner Zeitung

Should the Yes vote win, the paper says, "Sweden's social democrats and the European Union will owe the triumph to Anna Lindh, a woman committed to the idea of a Sweden fully integrated in Europe".

The German Berliner Zeitung describes the murder as an attack on Sweden's open society.

"Sweden not only feels grief but is forced to see, with powerless anger, that the core of its philosophy, the open society, has become the target of an attack which sprung from nowhere," the paper says.

Contrasts

France's Liberation praises Sweden's tradition of accessibility to politicians - despite the dangers - and contrasts it with the situation in France.

In monarchist Sweden, the paper notes, "this accessibility is so much at the heart of democracy that, sadly, it can prove fatal".

France, on the other hand, "overthrew the monarchy but kept its pomp, its sinecures, its carriages and its royal - now presidential - guards".

"True," the paper concedes, "too much accessibility can kill, as in Sweden, but too much distance could kill politics in France without necessarily protecting the politicians."

Moscow's Rossiyskaya Gazeta says "Anna Lindh's tragic death is bound to have broad repercussions, for it is not every day that a foreign minister is murdered in prosperous Europe."

But the paper praises Sweden - despite the "sad experience" of the killing of Prime Minister Palme 17 years ago - for not having renounced its customs and traditions.

It points out that the country's top politicians have continued, as before, to "shun the use of bodyguards and... official cars with flashing lights".

And it hopes that "one day Russia too will learn such lessons".

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