First declared unconstitutional in 2010, the law was revised in February 2012 at the request of the ruling Democrat-Liberal Party. The proposed bill was then approved by parliament.

"Demanded insistantly by civil society, supported by politicians in election campaigns, the law now risks being buried for good," regrets România Liberă. This is not surprising, because in its new incarnation the law included former prosecutors. "With, among them, perhaps some judges on the constitutional court," the paper suggests.

Although it welcomes the proposal presented by Home Affairs Commissioner, Cécilia Malmström, Dagens Nyheter warns that there is a risk that it will undermine individual rights –

If authorities believe that a person has transferred money to his or her spouse or children, it will be possible to freeze the assets of the relatives concerned. What exactly the proposal intends in such cases is not clear and there is a risk that it could be used against innocent people. [...] Errors will certainly occur in member states. And who will defend the rights of those affected?

Dagens Nyheter expresses its concern that the EU judicial system which is currently being created could be “heavily weighted in favour of police and prosecutors”.

The conviction also divides the Spanish press.

“The Supreme Court finishes with Garzón,” leads the centre-left newspaper El País on its front page. Challenging the decision, the paper writes that its purpose was to

neutralise Judge Garzón. [The decision] involves the expulsion from the judiciary of a judge who, whatever the opinion one may have of him, has rendered important services to society in the fight against terrorism, drug trafficking and organised crime, and one who has played a remarkable role in applying universal justice to the defence of human rights violated by dictatorships.

For its part, El  Mundo points out the unanimity of the Supreme Court judges’ decision, which in its view is “very important, because it confirms that there were no ideological divides, but a shared legal criterion, which is reflected in the decision.” The conservative daily goes on to criticise Garzón for publishing a statement in which he called the decision “unjust and predetermined“:

At the height of paranoia, he argues that the Court's decision "eliminates all possibility of investigating corruption," as if the only way to do so would be by infringing constitutional guarantees. The statement exposes the megalomania of this man, who believes himself to be the victim of a universal conspiracy and permits himself the luxury of despising and insulting the Supreme Court.

The opinion is shared by another conservative daily, ABC:  

Garzón has paid for his excesses: he has been his own victim. Believing that the end justified the means, he violated a sacred rule of the right of law, turning the investigation into an inquisitorial procedure. [...] It is now the turn of the Strasbourg Court, as he will now allow himself to exploit the international reputation that he has built so assiduously, more by means of spectacle than by his work as a judge [referring to a possible appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, to which Garzón may apply as a last resort].

Público, finally, concludes on its front page that Garzón has been “executed”. The daily sums up the split in opinion in a single sentence:

The left criticised the decision, and the right applauded it.

"Doubts about the credibility of Nafissatou Diallo’s testimony left Vance with little hope of obtaining a unanimous verdict from a 12-member jury were the case to go ahead," explains the daily, which points out that the attorney’s discovery of "lies" told by the plaintiff had already resulted in DSK being granted bail on 1st July. Following a hearing scheduled for 23 August, which is expected to rubber stamp the state attorney’s decision, Strauss-Kahn "will be free to leave America immediately." However, that is not to say that he has been proved innocent. As the daily notes, "the termination of the criminal prosecution will not mark the end of the affair in the US, where it is expected to be followed by a civil case."

In its ruling, the court in The Hague stated that the sentence could not automatically be applied to other lawsuits pending against the Dutch state in the Srebrenica massacre, such as the proceedings brought by the 6000 “Mothers of Srebrenica”. According to the Amsterdam daily, the government, traumatised by the matter, has remained “remarkably silent” following the ruling. “Up until yesterday, the legacy of Srebrenica had focused on the former commander of the Bosnian-Serb army, Ratko Mladic, who is defending himself before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia”, also located in The Hague.

While they wait, French commentators are focusing their attention on the American judicial system. Le Monde castigates a "shocking" system in which "the prosecutor is elected, and gambles his re-election on results", criticising the way that "the American media-justice machine has run away with itself, at a time when it most needed to prove its slowness and prudence". By contrast, Libération praises the speed of the American system: "Once part of the accusation had collapsed, the US courts drew their conclusions with astonishing and admirable swiftness. There is a lesson here: that though justice systems are by nature fallible, they prove themselves by their capacity to question and to admit when they are wrong."

The Belgian daily notes that on 8 December 2009 "the 27-member EU government again restated its recognition of the 1949 cease-fire lines as the Jewish state's borders," which excludes the territories occupied by Israel since 1967. Some 276 Israeli companies, "from SMEs to multinationals" are located in the occupied territories, Le Soir reports.

To appease American opinion, Knox will probably be freed following an appeal, although she’ll have to spend another two years in jail. “But that’s a small matter compared to the career of so many important people,” writes Preston. Meanwhile, US and British coverage of the case has caused outrage, in Italy, considered as meddling and disrespectful of Italian institutions. According to writer Alexander Stille, writing in La Repubblica, “nationality and points of view count” – the English want a scapegoat for the killing of a compatriot, and Amanda Knox, pictured as “a man eating, drug abusing she-devil” is “perfect tabloid material”. For Americans, on the other hand, the baby-faced Amanda, an American innocent in corrupt Old Europe “is an easy character to identify with”. There would be no such upsurge of feeling for her, however, if the case against her was strong, Stille argues. “In the US, guilt must established ‘beyond any reasonable doubt’, and in this case there is quite a lot to doubt. I wouldn’t bet 100 euros on the fairness of Italian justice”.