The weekly comments on a report by the European Commission indicating that France is "an average student" when it comes to innovation. "All in all, France falls short of the average among the Europe of 15 in innovation. It is barely above the norm in the Europe of 25. The country thus lags far behind the star students: Sweden, Finland, Germany and Denmark," writes Ingrid Vergara, who analyses the reasons for France's backwardness. "The inadequacy of efforts by France's small and medium-sized businesses to innovate. Their investment in R&D is below the European average. Few of them put in place new organisational methods and, overall, they have difficulty modernising. Another weakness: inadequate cooperation from public and private research bodies." (16/01/2006)

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"Luxembourg carries out research, but it's not innovative enough," Claude Karger argues. "As the regular EU Innovation Report recently showed, in this sector so vital for economic competitiveness, Luxembourg is lagging behind, even if it is in the upper middle ranks. Of course it's not just a question of pumping taxpayers' money into countless research projects and selling the investment off in grandiloquent speeches as great progress. Both the people and the economy want to see the results of the nation's efforts in the R&D sector." According to Karger, results can be achieved by "simplifying decision-making structures and through 'Public Private Partnership'. Increased cooperation between public institutions and private business is also the key to achieving greater mobility for researchers and students, and to a better understanding between academics and market-oriented research." (16/01/2006)

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Commenting on Europe's 16th-place ranking in the EU in innovation, Juan Oliver, the newspaper's Brussels correspondent, explains that the European Commission "alerted Spain that its economy had fallen behind in research, development and innovation over the past year, and that this situation poses a serious threat to its rhythm of growth and job creation. (...) According to the findings of European officials responsible for innovation, Spain is in the process of exhausting all the resources stemming from its economy's robust health and is not focusing on technological development - a situation that, over the long term, could lead to serious problems." (16/01/2006)

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Education Minister Annette Schavan explains the main priorities in research policy in an interview led by Marco Finetti and Tanjev Schultz. The key objective is "to introduce full financing, something universities have been calling for for some time now. This way we would be making it clear that it's worthwhile to conduct research at universities. That's where top researchers belong – close to students. Moreover, we intend to intensify cooperation between academic research and the economy. By doing so, we hope to repeat the success we had in laser technology. Germany was way behind in that area 20 years ago, but today we're global market leaders. We also want to focus on setting up top research centres in the field of medicine. Health care needs to benefit more from basic research. Finally, we want to concentrate on climate and energy research." (16/01/2006)

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The journalist Maroun Labaki examines Europe's identity crisis in light of proposals put forth at Saturday's meeting of the European left in Brussels. "Objective: 'to make Europe an economic success, to build a Europe of universal welfare, one that emancipates and protects, and to nurture a Europe of democracy'. Their proposals, often quite detailed, are interesting, but they seem to predate the the 'No' votes [in the French and Dutch referendums on the European constitution] and concern a rather distant future. The most urgent need lies elsewhere." Maroun Labaki lists the questions that remain outstanding. "Who wants what? Are there values that we want to defend collectively? (...) Who is not willing to sacrifice more national sovereignty on the altar of the future? How far should we go east and south? This is a debate that we will undoubtedly need to have. Sooner or later." (16/01/2006)

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There is no such thing as European justice, that is to say, a coherent body of institutions and mechanisms that ensure that citizens of the Union, everywhere in the Union, are given identical guarantees regarding their person, their property and their rights," regrets the former French justice minister, Robert Badinter. "How can we create conditions in which member states will have sufficient faith in a European judiciary system that brings together the legal systems of member states under a common judicial umbrella?" The jurist calls for reinforced cooperation in matters of justice. "Mutual recognition of decisions, harmonisation, indeed the unification of procedural and legislative rules in many areas should not run into any particular roadblocks. Such steps will engender a truly common judicial space - and, better still, a model of European justice - at the heart of the EU." (16/01/2006)

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Columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown offers her reaction to Chancellor Gordon Brown's call to promote patriotism with an annual day dedicated to celebrating British identity - along the lines of the US July 4 Independence Day. "In Europe, they admire the British leaders who beat Nazism and Communism, but today's Europeans also see us as perfidious, arrogant and horrible drunks. In the Middle East, increasingly, we are now perceived as in thrall to the US, and dishonest, too, because we breach international conventions. (...) No nation should define itself without paying any attention to how others see it. And we must not make the same mistake in our quest for a 21st-century identity. Our national identity de facto incorporates people from every corner of the globe, victims from every major disaster, revolution and war." (16/01/2006)

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"Dick Marty, the Swiss senator investigating the secret CIA prisons, asserts that there is no longer any doubt as to the existence of these detention centres. But he runs up against the wall of European governmental passivity," writes the progressive daily. "In this affair, there are those who do the dirty work, and those who close their eyes to the dirty work (...) It is impossible to transport suspected terrorists from one place to another without other intelligence services knowing about it. The passivity with which we authorised these operations in Europe is profoundly distressing. (...) All of Europe's governments remained deliberately silent. It is now up to Europeans to decide whether they will continue tolerating the illegal activities of the CIA on their territory." (16/01/2006)

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In the course of the next few months, the British revisionist David Irving will go on trial in Austria. He faces up to 10 years in prison for denying the Holocaust. Michael Bach Henriksen, head of the cultural desk, says he should be acquitted in the name of freedom of expression. "There are obvious parallels between this trial and another controversial case, namely that of Orhan Pamuk in Turkey. Officially, the Turks never committed genocide resulting in the deaths of up to a million Armenians during the First World War. Pamuk questions this official version of history and says it was indeed genocide. He is entitled to defy the official version of history. And so is Irving. No matter how crazy or distorted his views are, he's entitled to express them. The only thing achieved by imprisoning those who deny the Holocaust is to make martyrs of extremist groups." (16/01/2006)

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Following the failure of the budget vote in the Polish Sejm, Marek Beylin warns of the dangers of Andrzej Lepper and his radical Samoobrona (Self-Defence) party being allowed to join the ruling coalition. "We should follow the example of France where, for years now, President Chirac has managed to marginalise Jean-Marie Le Pen's radical party by refusing any kind of cooperation. Offering a declared enemy of democracy a share in government would be the act of idiots who, in their blind attempts to stay in power, choose a disastrously wrong path. To have Samoobrona as a governing party would result in even greater chaos and a continual threat to democratic rights." (16/01/2006)

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Slovakia is in great danger of sleeping through developments east of its borders, says Milan Nic. He points to how "in keeping with old tradition" most Slovak politicians and a large part of the media sided with Russia in the gas dispute between Moscow and Kiev. "We still haven't got used to the fact that we live on a European border and that things beyond that border greatly affect us. The area between the expanding EU and Russia is occupied by Ukraine, Belarus and Moldavia, and forms an important hinterland for our security." (16/01/2006)

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Miklos Haraszti, co-founder of the democratic opposition and currently OSCE Representative on the Freedom of the Media, analyses in an interview led by Rádai Eszter the situation of the independent press in post-Soviet countries. "In these new democracies, diversity of opinion is often only possible in the print media and the internet... However, the print media is under pressure from the authorities. The penal codes of these countries give the authorities 'constitutional instruments' for punishing freedom of speech and journalistic research by calling them libel, defamation, breach of honour or betrayal of state secrets. Oppositional non-governmental organisations have the right to criticise this practice, and we must give them our support." (13/01/2006)

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The opening of the World Cup 2006 was to be celebrated with a gala worthy of the Olympic Games in Berlin's Olympia Stadium. On Friday, the FIFA cancelled this event, saying it would damage the turf on the football pitch. Austrian artist André Heller, who was to organise the gala, expresses his surprise at this turn of events in an interview led by Wolfgang Sandner. "Of course, all those involved were aware from the start that you need good turf for a World Cup. Up to recently, FIFA had agreed with me that that was possible. Then on Thursday they informed me that their core business was football, not art, and that if there was even the remotest possibility that the legendary Brazilian team would not be able to play on an impeccable pitch, the show could not be given top priority." (16/01/2006)

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The journalist Massimo Nova revisits the Battisti affair via a new book published in France by journalist Massimo Nova entitled, "Generation Battisti". Cesare Battisti, suspected of masterminding an assassination attempt in Italy during "the lead years", had sought refuge in Paris, where he was protected for many years by a special law and supported by the intellectuals of the left, becoming a writer of detective thrillers along the way. Threatened with extradition in 2004, he has been on the run ever since. "The controversy reignited by Perrault does not focus on the manipulative schemes of certain intellectuals, but on the good faith shown by many of them and their particpation in a judicial affair that has become a matter of conscience. (...) From a reading of the declarations of solidarity, 'Battisti-Dreyfus' appears to be a victim of three authoritarian shifts: the 'Chilean' Italy of the 1970s, the Italy of Berlusconi and the France of Chirac and Sarkozy, that has turned its back on that of Sartre and Mitterand." (16/01/2006)

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Ivo Kummer, the director of the Soleure Days (the Swiss film festival whose 41st edition begins today) criticises the wish of the Swiss authorities to concentrate their financial aid on what are deemed popular, quality projects. "I find it very difficult to combine these two words. What tends to lend the Swiss cinema its richness is the variety of genres and themes. As in a little biotope, where a tiny plant can sprout and turn out to be beautiful. I fear that if we only produce five popular, quality fictional films a year, there will no longer be any room for this tiny plant to appear. Locomotives are necessary, so long as there is allowance made for the other carriages that follow." (16/01/2006)

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The debate about the inner-city toll in Stockholm continues. Thomas Idergard says the toll – referred to as the traffic jam tax – is absurd. "Traffic jams arise when people want do things, have ambitions, meet each other, do errands – and there are many other people who also want to do and are doing these things. Traffic jams in big cities are a sign of mobility, and mobility is a sign of development and progress, of jobs that are being done, and of dreams that are waiting to be fulfilled. Why should we, who have made the conscious decision to live in and with traffic jams, be punished for it?" (16/01/2006)

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