"Floyd Landis succeeds Lance Armstrong in the Tour's pantheon and one wants to believe that the 'connection' between the two men is limited to the colour of a passport [both are American] and the paramount importance attached to hard work", Pascal Bornand writes in an editorial, expressing his weariness with the doping allegations surrounding Armstrong's repeated success. "May [Landis's silence] about doping conceal nothing more than a natural modesty. After seven years of stifling domination, the shutters tightly sealed against any intrusion of the unpredictable, the bolts more unbreakable than Fort Knox, there was a need to air out the house to make its tenants feel more at home. Yet for all this, can one really speak of a new era, a mantra repeated since 1998 in the wake of the Festina earthquake that rocked the foundations of the cycling world ?" (24/07/2006)

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"The Champs-Elysees has once again become the mythical stage for cycling's crowning glory", rejoices the Spanish daily. "The American Floyd Landis won the most riveting Tour in history. The 2006 race will forever stand as the one that reignited our interest. Yet the conditions at the start were disastrous. The dismantling of an organised doping network in Madrid on the eve of the Tour destabilised the entire cycling family. The favourites were expelled or withdrew, just to be safe. The Tour needed a maximal dose of emotion, surprise and competition to overcome this. And this is what it got. The race that ended yesterday was epic. We witnessed courage, effort, the human condition. We began to feel an adrenaline rush again after so many years when things seemed too mechanical, too predictable." (24/07/2006)

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Markus Völker takes stock of this year's Tour de France with mixed feelings. "Floyd Landis made history with his spectacular performance in the Alps. The Tour was more turbulent and eventful than in previous years when Lance Armstrong's predominance made it so monotonous. But was the Tour cleaner this time ? Was there less doping behind the scenes ? Fewer performances that were the result of a synthetic boost ?" Völker doubts this was the case, pointing out that each team had its share of members who had already been penalised, members who were in the know, or who helped cover things up. "Swiss ex-pro Rolf Järmann once said that for his colleagues doping was about as morally reprehensible as driving your car at 130 kph down the highway. Basically this attitude has not changed; it's just that the asphalt heroes have become more cautious and keep their speed down to 129 kph nowadays." (24/07/2006)

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Correspondent Stephane Thirion reminds readers that this Tour was the last one for its organiser, Jean-Marie Leblanc. "Seventeen years after assuming responsibility for the Tour, Leblanc is bidding farewell with a dream champion ... As if in tribute to a man who had given cycling so much, the 2006 Tour brought together all that was best in the sport: cycling the way it once was, hard-fought breakaways, lapses and stunning feats. For if the world's biggest cycling race remains what it is today, vivacious and beloved by its fans, it owes its longevity to this supremely talented man, one who turned ideas into action and was also in tune with the times. Leblanc was the man of the anti-doping battle." (24/07/2006)

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According to young author Eszter Babarczy, the attitude of young Hungarians toward life is clouded by disillusionment. "The democratic opposition movement of the 1980s fought in the name of civilian society, the Helsinki human rights convention and social solidarity. Its legacy was a heap of beautiful illusions. Amidst the euphoria after the fall of communism, historians and political scientists talked of the new liberalism which would infect politicians with the anti-policies of the likes of Vaclav Havel." Babarczy notes that Hungary's civilian society has moved far away from such ideas. "Foundations for domestic purposes, obscure associations and organisations registered as churches and supposedly serving noble causes which quickly develop profit-oriented sub-organisations – the turn of the millennium saw the end of our childish idealism. We are now compensating with unbridled cynicism." (22/07/2006)

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In an interview with the daily's Turin correspondant, Domenico Quirico, the French sociologist Alain Touraine speaks about his new essay entitled 'The World of Women' in which he turns the tables and gives them the floor. Women's time has come not because they are liberated but because it is they who, given their different culture, are able to transform everyone's attitudes and life. "'The World of women' does not deal with the way women live. It describes an imagined world in which all initiative has passed to women. There was always a masculine world. Today, we have a world orientated towards the feminine. Which is to say that in Europe we have all gone from a society geared towards conquest - of the world, of science, of wealth - towards a culture geared towards internalisation, the individual and self-knowledge." (24/07/2006)

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The international negotiations on the future of the Serbian province of Kosovo, with its mainly Albanian population, have been resumed in Vienna. Guest commentator Andrej Ivanji is sceptical about the outcome of the negotiations. "Formal independence would do nothing to solve the catastrophic social situation or the widespread unemployment in Kosovo, which is already de facto independent of Serbia... The UN Security Council will make the final decision on Kosovo's status. The international community will seek to oblige the Kosovo Albanians because to provoke their dissatisfaction would be to jeopardise the future of the international peace mission in Kosovo, and because in the short term they're more important for maintaining stability in the region than weak, war-weary Serbia. Because what's at stake here is not just Kosovo's status, but the Albanian issue all over the Balkan region, including southern Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Greece. Long-term peace would secure EU membership for the entire Balkan region." (24/07/2006)

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"How can one convince employers to hire young people ? By offering them virtually free of charge. That at least is the direction in which a reform of the contract for young job-seekers is headed," the alternative Luxembourg weekly says in a critical editorial. "After France, is Luxembourg next in line for the CPE [First Employment Contract] ? ... In the employers' ideal world, this is what the new arrangement would look like: a two-year contract in which those on a CIE [Initiation to Employment Contract] would be hired without any obligation on the employer's part to provide either a description of the job or training. All this for a pauper's salary equivalent to 80 % of the SSM [minimum social wage], with complete latitude to fire the worker at any moment, without prior notice from Adem [the employment agency]. A dream. In France, the prime minister Dominique de Villepin recently tried this. We all know the outcome there." (24/07/2006)

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The daily condemns a government proposal to introduce uniformed border guards at Britain's ports and airports as little more than a "headline-grabbing" initiative. "It is unsurprising that [Home Office minister] Mr. [John] Reid felt he had to order something visible, if hardly dramatic, on immigration. In the past couple of days we have had the leak of a Home Office memo fearing that 45,000 'undesirables' could enter the country after Romania and Bulgaria join the EU in January. We have already had an increase of immigrants from eastern Europe since the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia joined in 2004. The memo spoke of 'enlargement fatigue' and worried that the 'enough is enough' argument is now winning. ... All this fuss is predicated on the notion that immigration from Eastern Europe is a bad thing. We see no evidence of this." (24/07/2006)

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In future many more people in Poland will have to prove that they did not collaborate with the secret services under communist rule. The Polish parliament has passed a new law, the so-called Lustration Law, which extends obligatory scrutiny of a person's past by the Polish Institute of National Memory (IPN) to diplomats, school directors, journalists, notaries, academics and directors of state-owned firms. In future, having worked as an agent or informant will constitute sufficient grounds for dismissal. Ewa Siedlecka criticises the new law. "In elections, ... when it comes to filling posts in the public sector and leading positions in the different government departments and agencies – and we're talking about between 100,000 and 150,000 important posts here – those who are under 35 will be at an advantage. They're the ones who won't need a certificate from the IPN. They're morally untarnished by birth, as it were. The PiS is pinning its hopes on the country's young generations." (24/07/2006)

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A group of Czech war veterans has called for monuments dedicated to the memory of former Czechoslovakian President Edvard Benes to be erected in every Czech town and city. Milan Hamersky does not approve. "Benes' past is controversial. His failures before the war, his problematic stance during it, and his indirect backing of the communists' grab for power have not been forgotten. The planned economy of the people's democracy was the direct result of the so-called 'Benes decrees'. His stance following the Second World War (regarding the expulsion of Germans and Hungarians) is indefensible... We should let Benes be judged by history and stop using him as a weapon in political skirmishes." (24/07/2006)

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The newspaper complains that although Estonia's economy is growing rapidly, the population is not prospering. "There's a simple explanation to why the economic growth is not translating into more money in people's pockets: the success of Estonian companies is based not on new business ideas, but on cheap labour. And now we're being told that (owing to worker migration) there's not enough manpower to continue developing Estonia's business sector. If people only have the choice between doing unskilled work for low wages here or doing the same work for more money elsewhere, you can't blame them for taking the second option." (24/07/2006)

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Hakim El-Karoui and Jean-Pascal Picy, senior lecturers at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, write in a joint opinion about the arrival of a black presenter on the primetime newscast of the private channel TF1. They argue that the main characteristic of Harry Roselmack is not the colour of his skin, but his youth. "Indeed, at 33, Harry Roselmack seems like someone from another planet on France's political, economic and mediatic landscape. ... At this age - and regardless of the talents of those in question - it is considered the proper thing to do to be patient and bide your time until the day might come when the old guard is good and ready to step aside. The overrepresentation of fifty-something, sixty-something and seventy-something in high-level posts seems to be one of the defining features of our society, at least as much as the under-representation of diversity." (24/07/2006)

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Three years ago Maxim Biller's novel "Esra" was prohibited shortly after its release. His former girlfriend had obtained a court order against the novel because she claimed to see herself reflected too accurately in the main character of the book. Now she plans to sue Biller for 100,000 euros in damages. 100 prominent cultural figures have signed an appeal in protest, including author Daniel Kehlmann, who comment. "The saddest thing about this case is that anything you say about it becomes a platitude even as you say it: that all writers, no matter how great their powers of imagination, use life as a basis for their work; that had such standards applied in the past, some of the greatest books ever written – 'The Sorrows of young Werther', 'Vanity Fair', 'A la recherche du temps perdu', 'Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family' – would never have been published; that it should not be up to a court to decide the value of a book and to forbid Biller something that Proust and Mann were allowed to do; that it's not acceptable that we introduce a censorship based on personal injury and hurt feelings in a country which, in the not-too-distant past, witnessed so many types of political censorship." (24/07/2006)

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Correspondent Philippe Dagen is delighted to see the works of visual artist Pierre Huyghe on display at London's Tate Modern. "For the first time since it opened, the illustrious British museum is dedicating a personal exhibition to a young French artist - Huyghe was born in 1962. This is said to be a sign of renewed interest in art from the other side of the Channel in the capital of Young British Artists." Using the same title, the event - Celebration Park - presents, in a different manner, works shown last Spring at the Musuem of Modern Art of the city of Paris. "The videos, and particularly 'A Journey That Wasn't', presented as the culmination of the exhibition, are highlighted in an effective manner. This confirms what we already knew: Pierre Huyghe's ability to use the spaces he is given to maximal advantage in order to bring to life visions sprung from a realm between the psychedelic and the symbolic." (24/07/2006)

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"The pipes fall silent", the daily laments in an editorial headline. It is a reaction to new Army guidelines requiring Scottish bagpiper-soldiers to wear earplugs, and restricting their playing time to less than half an hour a day to protect their hearing. "It is hardly surprising that soldiers are no longer permitted to practise the bagpipes for any length of time. Health and safety is becoming the chief purpose of the Armed Forces. Our troops may not fire loud guns too often, nor be exposed to harrowing sights. Yet we are losing a brave and noble tradition. For hundreds of years, the skirl of the pipes has inspired our men and struck fear into our enemies. ... Some pipers have carried on playing in extraordinary circumstances ... What these men would say about the cowardice and officiousness of the latest ruling doesn't bear thinking about." (24/07/2006)

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