European press review

European papers continue to focus on the riots which began in a Parisian suburb and have now spread throughout the country.

Elsewhere, EU foreign ministers fail to make progress on the union's 2007-13 budget.

France eyes curfews as riots spread

"Villepin: curfew in the suburbs", reads the main front-page headline in France's Le Figaro.

The paper notes that yesterday French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said prefects would be given powers to impose curfews to stem widespread rioting on the outskirts of major cities.

"There will be an exceptional cabinet meeting this morning to enable curfews in the suburbs on the basis of a 1955 law," it reports.

France's Liberation recalls that the 1955 law is part of measures used during the Algerian War of Independence.

"This is nice progress in the fight against the climate of fear, which confirms that Chirac's rule is a tragic farce," it says.

Chirac's rule is a tragic farce. France's Liberation

The paper acknowledges that restoring the state's authority must be the priority, but it adds that "this must not be done at just any price".

France's Le Monde says the unrest marks the failure of key promises made by President Jacques Chirac.

The paper recalls that he pledged to reduce social inequalities as a candidate in the 1995 presidential election, and to bring down crime when he stood again seven years later.

"This explosion of violence in the suburbs, this 'urban havoc', as General de Gaulle might have said, amounts to an implacable acknowledgment of the failure on major promises made by Chirac, the candidate", it says.

The paper is also unimpressed by the president's remarks addressed to the nation after Sunday's domestic security council meeting.

It accuses him of offering nothing but "vague words, formulated haltingly, which showed that, if the president's words used to be able to work magic, this is no longer the case".

Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is also struck by what it regards as a less than assured performance.

"Never before have we seen the French president, who appears to be in full command in any other situation, so helpless, so uncertain that he did not even know what to do with his hands," the paper says.

France's 'Katrina' exposes failings

Spain's El Pais says Interior Minister Sarkozy's application of a curfew and emergency measures is a recognition "of the failure of a policy of economic, social, cultural and urban integration over the decades", which has led to a situation where people of Arabic or African origin, the majority of them French citizens, live in "more than 700 suburban ghettos".

"If Hurricane Katrina exposed the marginalisation of the black population abandoned in New Orleans, these riots have exposed the profound cracks in French society," the paper maintains.

"Parallel civilisations"

Examining the causes of the unrest, the Czech Republic's Pravo wonders why there were no problems with France's first and second generations of immigrants.

"Why are there problems now?", the daily asks.

"Did the third generation possibly give in to the temptation that it is more comfortable to live off welfare benefits than to try to form your own future? To have things now, at once, without years of effort at school, in training or in study?"

A commentator writing in another Czech daily, Mlada Fronta Dnes, draws parallels between French immigrants and Czech Gypsies and sounds a note of warning: "If we do not tackle the Roma issue, we may, within several years, or in the next generation, experience a similar situation with the Roma."

We may experience a similar situation with the Roma. Czech Mlada Fronta Dnes

Romania's Romania Libera feels European countries have failed to integrate immigrant communities "for reasons stemming from racial or ethnic prejudices".

"Even if they benefit from the social model and democratic freedoms", the paper says, immigrants "have built up parallel societies based on values other than the official European ones".

"It is about an anti-European civilisation which exists nowhere else than in Europe. However high and noble the European states may be, if they continue to ignore the existence of such parallel civilisations for ideological reasons, the consequences could be disastrous."

EU budget deadlock

Germany's Der Tagesspiegel lays most of the blame for the failure of EU foreign ministers to reach a deal on the 2007-2013 budget yesterday at France's door.

"A consensus without reforms will not be found, but, contrary to the general public impression, it is not chiefly the British but the French who are digging their heels in," the paper says.

It said France does not want to give up its agricultural subsidies despite the fact that it sees itself as a modern industrial nation.

The paper adds, however, that the British rebate cannot be justified any more, either.

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