European press review

French papers voice concern over the bomb threat facing the country's railways and weigh up security needs versus the public's right to information.

In Germany, the press ponders the implications of a court ruling making it harder to keep suspects under electronic surveillance in their own homes.

Rail blackmail

In France, with 10,000 rail staff scanning the country's rail tracks looking for bombs, the threat from a mystery group to blow up sections of track is the lead story on most front-pages.

Le Figaro is struck by how "mysterious" the group remains.

"The investigators," the paper says, "only know one thing for certain, which is that the group is prepared to carry out mass slaughter, as shown by a bomb it left on the Paris-Toulouse line near a 57-metre-high viaduct" in February.

Le Monde notes that a "terrorist group calling themselves AZF" has been threatening "for several weeks" to attack the country's rail system.

But this was not reported due to the government's request to the media to be "discreet", it says.

Terrorism legitimises the use of secrecy and precautions of a new kind. Le Temps

The daily Liberation - which was asked by the police for permission to use its personal columns as a mailbox in communication with the blackmailers - said the police "could have done it behind our backs, but they chose to warn us and we accepted the idea".

The paper also defends its decision, at the authorities' request, not to report the story.

"Must the public's right to be informed of a threat always override the hope to see those brandishing that threat arrested?" it asks.

"An affair that people might initially have regarded as a practical joke," it adds, "is mobilising all the political forces of France".

The Swiss daily Le Temps mulls the wider dilemmas facing the media in the post-11 September world.

"The transparency claimed by our communication-dominated age," the paper says, "demands that everything be made known all the time."

"But terrorism, in causing an intermediate state between war and peace, legitimises the use of secrecy and precautions of a new kind."

Domestic bugs

Many German papers comment on the ruling by the country's Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, south of Frankfurt, setting tighter curbs on the authorities' right to bug private homes.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung hails the decision as a "milestone".

The paper believes that for too long the Constitutional Court allowed parliament to give priority to security considerations over civil rights.

What kind of signal is this sending out to tomorrow's perpetrators? Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

"At last," it says, "the court is trying to teach politicians and legislators the value of basic rights again."

Die Tageszeitung disagrees. "Unfortunately," it says, "those who salute yesterday's verdict from Karlsruhe as a milestone in the protection of civil rights, are mistaken."

The surveillance of private homes, it says, is a method rarely used in practice.

And it goes on to argue that the decision does nothing to curb the rise in telephone tapping, which, according to the paper, is approved in 26,000 cases per year.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung welcomes the fact that the ruling provides "clarity".

But it wonders whether the judges went too far in leaving suspects, as the paper puts it, "in peace", as long as they are in their own home.

"What kind of signal is this sending out to tomorrow's perpetrators, and indeed to their pursuers?" it asks.

"Nuanced" and "intelligent" is how Die Welt chooses to describe the ruling.

"The blanket claim that the bugging of the homes of people suspected of serious crimes is unconstitutional has been rejected," the paper notes.

But while the ruling "creates clarity about the constitutional grounds," it says, "it imposes such tight limitations on the practice that its very existence is at risk."

Austria's Der Standard sees the effectiveness of bugging as doubtful.

"But what is beyond doubt," it adds, "is that it facilitates the establishment of a Big Brother state."

Future of Russian

An international congress on the future of the Russian language in the CIS opens in the Kyrgyz capital today, the Russian broadsheet Nezavisimaya Gazeta reports.

"Russia is finally beginning to spend more money on supporting teaching Russian in the CIS," the paper says, adding that over 23m roubles has been earmarked by the government for a programme teaching Russian in the CIS.

The paper notes that the number of Russian-language schools in Ukraine has decreased sevenfold, according to the Russian Education Ministry, and by three times in Kazakhstan and Georgia.

"It is more prestigious to know English and it is thought to be very old-fashioned to speak Russian," the paper adds.

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