"These transgressions tell us that time is up for financial shadow regimes," says Nicolas Richter. "But Liechtenstein has raised the status of tax evasion to a kind of human right, and gives constitutional protection to banking privacy. At best, reforms take place when foreign entities uncover the biggest abuses. … The German government should offer to negotiate a comprehensive legal agreement for the principality, but should also make it clear that commercial sanctions are possible if the country continues to shirk European standards. ...  There is no Europe à la carte. Anyone who wishes to profit from the EU's open borders and legal security must also be prepared to hand over information about alleged criminals." (20/02/2008)

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Catherine Cossy comments on the virulent reaction of Liechtenstein authorities to Germany, accused of attacking the sovereignty of this little neighbouring state. "Only the little opposition party, Free List, says it understands that Germany should do everything it can to fight tax evasion. ... The Principality is under shock, to say the least. Prince Alois [Head of State] is talking about a campaign orchestrated from up top. ... On Tuesday [February 19th] the OECD nevertheless recalled in a press release the fact that Liechtenstein was one of the last countries in the world, along with Andorra and Monaco, not to co-operate enough with the international community in matters of tax evasion. Foundations in particular, a Liechtenstein specialty, have been on the hot seat for a long time [there is said to be 50,000 of them]." (20/02/2008)

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Helmut Spudich criticizes the procedures of German tax investigators. "Of course we have to fight hard against the systematic tax evasion - totalling millions of euros - of a highly paid clique (who prefer the term 'key personnel'). But to fight at any price? Even to the extent of procuring data whose release is illegal in other countries? Germans would probably be highly indignant if the CIA were to requisition Siemens data in Germany for the purposes of the US exchange supervisory authority. Remember, Europeans were certainly quite upset when the US secret service pored over SWIFT transactions via the European bank transfer centre, looking for signs of terrorist funding.  But there seems to be a certain satisfaction in the fact that the German Federal Intelligence Service has 'cracked a bank' in Liechtenstein (to quote an investigator)." (20/02/2008)

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In a text published by several European newspapers, the Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulic explains that he feels a mixture of hope and fear regarding Kosovo's independence. "The 2.2 million people who make up Serbia's Albanian minority have been the victims of the brutality of their neighbours, of Milosevic, of his police and of his army, who carried out ethnic cleansing. This gives them the moral right to a state of their own, to freedom and to independence. But the legitimacy of their benefiting from their own state, in the name of moral rights and justice, has nothing to do with legal rights. And this is where things start to get complicated. ... All EU leaders say that this is a 'unique case', but nobody is explaining why, or how to guarantee it. ... The seed of fear has been sewn once again. This is the sad consequence of the act of secession, which is nonetheless fair and deserved." (20/02/2008)

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Writer Jo Harper wonders whether Poland needs a "reality check" about its history. "Poland's central collective narrative is of a morally clean nation that has witnessed horror but not been its collaborator. If there is a single thread to this narrative it is the notion that Poland is untainted by the Holocaust. The standard denials of culpability in pogroms and purges of Jews during or after the war, however, have been slowly unwinding since the 2001 publication of a book called 'Neighbors' by Jan Gross. ... Collective historical memories now seem to be flowing all at once and that collective memory appears to be split. ... And then there's the issue of dealing with Poland's communist past and the long-awaited trial of General Jaruzelski. The Jaruzelski case is partially linked to a broader campaign known in Poland as 'lustracja' (lustration, an eerie echo of earlier 'cleansings') initiated by the Kaczynski twins, the key players in the Law and Justice (PiS) party ... that lost power at last September's elections." (18/02/2008)

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After the rioting by Danish youth, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is taking up the suggestion of the Danish People's Party that parents be held responsible for material damages caused by their children. The paper welcomes this suggestion: "Few countries have as many projects, activities and programmes for integrating fringe groups as Denmark. So when people talk about society sharing the blame for the marginalisation of groups, part of the explanation can be sought in the numerous programmes with which this treatment-obsessed society has bracketed these groups. …  To hold parents legally responsible can have a preventive effect, using economic pressure to force some parents to reassume responsibility for raising their own children." (20/02/2008)

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Sweden's government wants to set higher standards for immigrants when it comes to learning Swedish. Publicly financed language classes should be limited to three years and should conclude with a final exam, say Nyamko Sabuni, Minister for Integration, and Education Minister Jan Björklund. The newspaper comments: "It looks as if Europe's liberal powers, from Sarkozy's government in France to Rasmussen's in Denmark, have adopted a new tone: open disdain for those at the bottom. … Academics who come here have an easier time acquiring the language; they are paid. Anyone who is basically illiterate gets no such support. That's a signal from Sabuni and Björklund, who want to counteract their party's poor survey results." (20/02/2008)

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In Athens, on February 19th, Matthew Nimetz, UN mediator for the naming of Macedonia, presented a new proposition to Greek and Macedonian governments to try and resolve their dispute. "All this is, once again, a 'diplomatic shadow theatre'," complains Irini Karanasopoulou. "This certainly won't change the current situation on an international level. Even if we accept one of Nimetz's proposals, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia [FYROM] will continue to be called 'Macedonia' by the international community. This is exactly what offends Greek authorities, who are claiming historical heritage. But the UN and the United States want to find a solution and avoid Greece using its veto to prevent FYROM from joining NATO in a few weeks [at the summit organised in Bucharest]." (20/02/2008)

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Poland's right-liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk has been in office for one hundred days. In a commentary, political scientist Rafał Matyja suggests that Tusk has positioned himself well for the presidential elections of 2010, through his ongoing conflict with right-conservative President Lech Kaczyński. "Tusk and his office have discovered that you can ensure public support by starting dozens of arguments with the office of the president. On one hand, it makes it possible to start a presidential campaign without having to announce it as such. … On the other hand, the baseless conflicts provide a wonderful distraction from the uncomfortable topics that would otherwise occupy the press. It may not improve the image of the government when it argues over when a fax was sent, the form of an invitation to the presidential palace, or the particular phrasing used by some spin doctor or other, but it turns attention away from important subjects." (20/02/2008)

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Stephan Richter, chief editor of the American weekly The Globalist, considers that Europeans are emancipating themselves more and more from American authority in the management of global affairs. "Europeans strived to convince themselves for too long that their American counterparts had miracle remedies that would allow them to resolve complex or very risky affairs better than old Europe. These simplistic views have ended up disappearing from the thinking of European elites. ... The Europeans have rid themselves of their supposed faith in American paternalism. Now it is they who are called upon, asked to gather their strength beyond boundaries, to initiate thinking-up rescue plans for the world's problems, without waiting for the least support from the United States." (20/02/2008)

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Valentino Parlato, founder of the Italian daily, 'Il Manifesto', responds to a recent article written by the French author Marek Halter. The latter accused him of being the instigator of the call for a boycott of the Turin International Book Fair, at which this year's guests of honour are Israeli writers. "I am absolutely against the boycott of this book festival (books should always be respected) and, through it of the State of Israel. ... Let us then take advantage of this International book fair in Turin to debate, to criticise Israeli policy, to defend the rights of Palestinians, who, in this territory, appear to have become the new Jews. Let's discuss, let's confront one another, but let's reject this boycott. ... Boycotting is mute. It is a 'no' without an argument. There are going to be highly intelligent Jewish writers in Turin and we should discuss matters with them, reason, be controversial, defend the Palestinians' rights." (20/02/2008)

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"Two monumental contemporary art works, Alberto Burri's Grande Cretto, in Gibellina, Sicily, and Daniel Buren's Les Deux Plateaux in Paris, are urgently in need of restoration", notes Lea Mattarella. "The piece of land art that the Italian artist conceived in the Belice Valley between 1985 and 1989, and the columns that the French artist erected on the Place du Palais Royal in Paris, in 1986, are in very bad condition ... . The question that springs to mind in both cases is, how is it possible for a work of art to only last such a short time? Frescoes in churches, monuments in cities, architectural work from antiquity, last for centuries. The 20th century seems to have inaugurated a new form of art that is degraded faster and faster." (20/02/2008)

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Journalist Vilis Normanas has experimented with translating a few pages from prize-winning foreign novels and sending them to Lithuanian publishers – he received only rejections. "Why did I do it? Let me explain. Because for a long time now, no books have been published in Lithuania without the promise of profit, that means no important books intended for an intellectual public. Instead, we find a whole array of romances, crime novels and other entertainment literature. I don't deny that publishers must survive somehow, but they're really not doing badly at the moment. Many confirm that sales are up. The real question, however, is whether anyone at all in Lithuania really wants to read good literature." (20/02/2008)

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French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet, founder of the nouveau roman, is dead. Jürgen Ritte praises his wide-ranging talents: "He fundamentally changed the notion of what a novel is, what a film is. He expressed this again perfectly, just before his 80th birthday, in his novel 'La Reprise' (2001), whose directly translated title - 'The Repetition'-  barely does it justice. He meant rather resumption, improvement, repair, returning (as if to a boxing ring). One can read the novel under any one of these titles. Each provides another theme, another meaning. And in the multiplicity of interpretations there is not only an iridescent sensory play of literature, but also the unfathomable figure of a modern author for whom fiction is all." (19/02/2008)

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