European press review

Two days before EU enlargement, Thursday's European papers wonder what will happen next over the EU's stalled constitution and what shape the Union will take in the future. Two reports take widely differing views of Slovakia's minority Roma.

Spotlight on France

Germany's Der Tagesspiegel thinks that an article by British Prime Minister Tony Blair which appeared on the front page of the leading French daily Le Monde earlier this week was no accident.

"It was a way of ensuring that the French president would read it", the paper suggests.

In his article, Mr Blair defended his decision to hold a referendum on the constitution, a decision which, the paper suggests, has put France's President Jacques Chirac in a tight spot.

Mr Chirac "promised the French a referendum, but doesn't quite dare to hold one any more", it says.

Instead, the paper says, Mr Chirac "might start a fight over Blair's wish to make changes to the draft constitution", thus scuppering the constitution and leaving the French president free to pursue what it calls "his pet project of a core Europe".

Paris's Liberation takes a clear stand in favour of national referendums on the constitution.

"If the Union wishes to carry a weight in world affairs commensurate with the size of its population and wealth, and with the power of its common values", it argues, "it must have the legitimacy that only the citizens' support through the ballot box can provide".

The paper hails the 1 May enlargement as "an historic event", but also tells its readers not to get "drunk on the bombastic speeches" bound to be made on the day.

New blueprint

An editorial in Le Monde warns against what it calls "the anti-European thinking" of those who believe that the "original blueprint" for Europe can be preserved in the future.

"To be European in the 25-strong Union," the paper argues, "is first and foremost to recognize that the original ambitions and blueprint must partly change away from the federalist and integrationist dream of the founding fathers".

But it also means, the paper adds, "to reject the fatalism of a gradual slide towards becoming a mere free-trade zone". "Our destiny is neither that promised by France and Germany, nor the one dreamt of by Great Britain," it says.

Barcelona's El Periodico sees no prospects for what it calls "a Paris-Berlin-Madrid axis lined up against a United Kingdom" in the newly-enlarged EU.

The change as far as Spain is concerned, the paper says, is that there has been "a return to the original foreign policy laid down at the time of joining the Union", and from which the previous prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, "departed by his own personal decision".

Unlike Mr Aznar, it argues, the goal of his successor Jose Luis Zapatero, "is to strengthen Europe, not to trip it up".

Roma plight

A special correspondent for the Swiss Le Temps reports from a Slovak Republic on the condition of one of the country's minorities.

"Slovakia's Roma," the correspondent argues, "are the hidden side of the 'Slovak miracle'." The country "is attracting foreign investors", he notes, "but one-tenth of its population have been gradually deprived of their rights as citizens" by what he calls "an implacable economic apartheid".

Two-thirds of Slovakia's 500,000 Roma "live in nearly 600 ghettos, mostly in the east of the country", the report adds, with the remainder living "in the towns... struggling for survival to preserve the illusion of integration".

"There is no work," the paper quotes a Romany woman as saying, "and even when a job comes up, it's not for us, because we are 'blacks'. As far as the 'whites' are concerned, we don't exist."

And the special correspondent concludes: "The Slovak majority say Roma are genetically lazy and have no skills, but this is not the case."

An article in the Czech Republic's Lidove Noviny would seem to confirm such prejudices.

The author believes that a plan to regulate the number of registered foreigners according to the area taken up by their dwellings is, as he puts it, "targeted at Roma from Slovakia as well as Chinese, Vietnamese and Ukrainians".

"Few Czechs mind hard-working and diligent Chinese and Vietnamese", the paper says, but "Roma do pose a specific problem". Those "from the poor Slovak shanty towns", it argues, "are hopelessly trapped in their social situation" and, having "no working nor civilized habits... are unable to instil them in their children".

But experts, the paper says, "assure the public that they are too apathetic even to move to the Czech Republic".

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.

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