The Dutch doctors’ organisation (KNMG) is to meet Health Minister Edith Schippers on May 16 to discuss the possibility of limiting the scope of the law on euthanasia, which came into force in 2002.

A large proportion of doctors believe that euthanasia should not be used in cases where patients suffering from serious dementia are no longer able to communicate, even if they have previously signed a request for euthanasia. Instead they want the practice restricted to cases where patients can confirm — verbally or otherwise — they want to put an end to their lives.

However, the medical profession remains divided on the issue, with some doctors still in favour of the full application of the law. As a GP cited by Volkskrant explains: “In respecting his or her will, we pay homage to a patient who was once alive, and not to a human being who no longer knows if he or she exists.”

Some 350,000 (according to police) and 800,000 (according to organisers) opponents of a bill to extend marriage and adoption rights to homosexual couples took part in a Paris demonstration to demand that the text be withdrawn. Organised by Catholic associations and backed by part of France’s conservative opposition, it was one of the largest protests in to take place in France in the last 30 years. The government has insisted that the bill will not be withdrawn.

This morning’s De Morgen leads with a remarkable headline: “Why, at De Morgen, we are no longer using the word ‘allochtoon’” – a term used in the Netherlands and Dutch speaking Belgium to designate immigrants or their descendants, but contested by those who believe it to be a stigma.

With regard to his decision, the daily’s editor in chief, Wouter Verschelden, remarks –

This newspaper has decided to no longer use this extremely vague term, which by definition designates people who ‘are not from here’, but which in reality is never used to refer to Dutch, French or German people. It is a cover-all term with an unlimited number of meanings: Muslim, poorly educated, deprived, Arab, North African, non-European etc.

The newspaper also notes that “allochtoon” amounts to a “unique linguistic phenomenon” –

In English and French, the term simply does not exist. [...]  in these countries people are never lumped together by a single denominator”. [It is] a simplistic, unsubtle label for a group of people [because even immigrants children] “are very likely to be labelled ‘allochtonen‘. When are you no longer considered to be an allochtoon? Can quality journalism have recourse to such a term in the light of the awareness that it is a marginalising stigma?

“No”, announces the newspaper, which points out that it does not aim to downplay “problems linked to multi-ethnic and multi-religious cohabitation”. The daily’s decision is not a bolt from the blue; it takes into account recent events in the country, like the release of the film Femme de La Rue   – a documentary on sexual harassment perpetrated by young immigrants or young men of immigrant origin in the streets of Brussels – and the riots in Antwerp in response to the film The Innocence of Muslims, which was followed by controversy over Flemish nationalist leader Bart De Wever’s intention to replace the city of Antwerp’s slogan “The city belongs to all of us” if he is elected mayor on 14 October.

It is a “cry” of dismay, argues Süddeutsche Zeitung, but it is one intended to provoke international controversy. The newspapers remarks have been prompted by a Günter Grass poem which has simultaneously been published by the Munich daily, The New York Times, La Repubblica et El Pais. In the poem entitled "What must be said", Grass warns against a war between Israel and Iran.

In view of the threat “of the extinction of the Iranian people”, the Nobel Prize laureate notably insists that Berlin should refuse to supply submarines to Tel-Aviv, arguing that Israeli nuclear capability is “a danger to the fragile peace in the world”. At the same time, the writer offers less detailed criticism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom he simply describes as a “loudmouth”. 

Grass, who shocked Europe with the 2006 revelations of his involvement in the Waffen SS, explains that fear of the “habitual verdict of anti-Semiticism” led him to remain silent for too long.

In Germany, controversy immediately followed the publication of the text, which featured on the front pages of three national dailies, including Die Welt, which headlined: “Günter Grass, the eternal anti-Semite”. The star columnist of the Berlin daily, polemicist Henryk M. Broder remarks –

Grass is the prototype of the educated anti-Semite, who is well-meaning when it comes to Jews. Haunted by feelings of guilt and shame and also driven by the desire to settle history, he is now attempting to disarm the 'cause of the recognizable threat.'

"SS canonised," leads Tageszeitung, with a front-page photo of the leader of the Nazi organisation, Heinrich Himmler, on a visit to SS volunteers in Estonia in October 1943.

The Berlin daily is referring to a bill that the Estonian Minister of Defence is hoping to have adopted in March. According to the text, all those who took part in the fight against the Soviet Union during the Second World War will be granted the status of “freedom fighters,” which includes Estonian members of the SS.

Previous attempts to push through the bill failed in 2006 and on 2010. This time around, "majority support appears to guaranteed,” reports TAZ. The Russian embassy in Tallinn has described the bill as “blasphemous,” while the German Green Party has criticised a "retrospective justification of the atrocities perpetrated by Hitler’s henchmen in the Soviet Union."

On 22 December French MPs adopted a private member's bill on the negation of genocides. Backed in equal measure by the majority and the left-wing opposition, the bill proposes to make “the denial of genocides acknowledged by the law” a crime punishable by up to a year in prison or a fine of up to 45,000 euros. If it is approved it will add to a body of legislation that includes four other "memorial" laws, which enshrine the state’s official point of view on historical facts.

The text of the bill implicitly targets the Armenian genocide of 1915-16, and the 1.2 million Armenians (two thirds of the Armenian population under the Ottoman Empire) who died in the course of officially sanctioned deportations and massacres. The bill, which will have to be approved by the French Senate and for a second time by the French parliament before it becomes law, has provoked the ire of Ankara, which has recalled its ambassador and threatened France with diplomatic and trade reprisals.

In Le Point, columnist Pierre Beylau deplores what he describes as a self-interested manoeuvre to attract more votes in the run-up to next year’s presidential election:

For French diplomacy in the Middle East "the power struggle with Ankara is absurd," adds Le Monde. However, the daily notes that the main problem rests in the nature of the bill itself:

For its part, news website Mediapart interprets the quarrel in the light of the history of France and Turkey, two modern nations that have been marked by the influence of founding fathers – General de Gaulle and Mustapha Kemal – who continue to influence their respective political elites.

In Turkey, in the English version of the daily Zaman, columnist B�lent Keneş launches a direct attack on the French president: “By introducing bans to one side of the debate about a controversial issue that must be settled by historians and just ahead of the presidential elections, he showed everyone what democracy � la Sarkozy is.”

In Milliyet, Mehmet Tezkan argues that the French President “has two reasons why he wants this law to be approved:”

Finally, Ali Bayramoglu writing for the daily Yeni Şafak points out:

The future of democracy in Europe has once again come to the fore in the German press, with Jürgen Habermas adding weight to some of the arguments leveled by an incendiary article in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which attacked the destruction of democracy in Europe implied by criticism of the ill-fated Greek referendum.

In the columns of the same newspaper, the internationally renowned philosopher writes of “the need to save the dignity of democracy,” and describes outgoing Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou as “the archetype of a politician who came a cropper attempting to bridge the widening rift between financial experts and citizens; [between] the systemic imperatives of unbridled financial capitalism – which politics has untethered from the real economy – and the electorate’s complaints about empty promises of social justice."

In the context of a crisis that has made it impossible to sit on the fence, Habermas argues that the politicians should clearly explain the situation and restore power of decision to citizens: “this is not only a question of democracy, but also a question of dignity."

He continues: "the Greek disaster should act as a warning against the post-democratic strategy adopted by Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. The concentration of a power in the hands of an inner circle of government leaders who impose their agreements on national parliaments is not the way forward": what is needed is a new European constitutional process with an integral role for citizens…

Other commentators have been quick to respond to the philosopher’s article, notably Spiegel Online’s star columnist, Jan Fleischhauer, who furiously accuses Habermas to be "the latest heavyweight among a number of well-meaning German intellectuals" to have  joined “the camp of hysterics with a penchant for the apocalypse”.

"In his account of the euro crisis, politicians have been crushed by the economy to the point where they have become zealous underlings of financial capitalism. […] But when it is time to make concrete demands, Habermas runs into the same problem as the one encountered by the Occupy Wall Street activists, who, like him, have nothing to say except that wealth should be redistributed in some way. In truth, the sole aim of all of this rhetorical effort is to absolve politicians of their responsibility, so that they are free to implement their policies undisturbed."

Twenty-two years after the 1989 revolution, “the police will investigate the communists” announces SME. Two months after a law made it a punishable offence to deny crimes committed by the communist regime, the police will look into whether the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS), established in 1992, is denying that any such crimes were committed by its ideological predecessor, the Czechoslovak Communist Party: “Since there is no collective guilt, there are no communist crimes,” writes KSS on its website.

Noting that the new law could lead to dissolution of the party, the Bratislava daily also recalls that no high-ranking Communists – neither Vasil Bilak, who signed the letter of invitation to the armies of the Warsaw Pact in 1968, nor the head of State Security, Alojz Lorenc – have ever been put on trial. SME is all the more sceptical as it considers that “the justice system is still run by (former) members of that party that organised state terror.” In the 2010 elections, the KSS received 0.83% of the vote.

In the Netherlands, "strong joints will be considered a hard drug", says Dutch daily De Volkskrant. The government recently decided that Dutch coffee shops will no longer be allowed to sell cannabis with a content above 15% of THC, the active component of marijuana. A 2010 sampling, showed that 80% of the cannabis sold had a THC level of over 15%. The ruling conservative coalition says it is following the advice of a commission set up to study the health effects of high levels of THC by the preceding Labour government. The measure is another tough blow for Dutch coffee shops, which, as of 2012, will have to establish frequent user cards aimed at dissuading drug tourism.

The Czech Republic, on the other hand, seems headed towards more flexible legislation. The Health Ministry announced that it is preparing a drug law that would allow marijuana to be considered as a medical drug. It could be prescribed to those with serious health conditions; those undergoing chemotherapy, or suffering from multiple sclerosis or a terminal illness, for example. "The marijuana will be cultivated by the State or imported from abroad," says Czech daily MF Dnes, explaining that the hemp could be cultivated directly by the State or by private establishments under licence. It could also be imported from the Netherlands, which, due to current legislation, is the most probable solution. It remains to be seen, the paper notes, how the new "medicine" will be made available only in pharmacies and via medical prescription and not on the black market.

“Historic vote ushers in divorce,” announces The Times of Malta. On 25 July, the Maltese parliament passed a law authorising divorce and remarriage. MPs voted by 52 votes to 11 with three abstentions to approve a bill that will come into force in October. The change to the country’s legislation is the final step in process that has overcome significant opposition – Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi voted against the bill which was supported by only three members of his cabinet. The vote takes into account the result of a referendum earlier this year. On 28 May, 53% of the country’s electorate cast their ballots in favour of the legalisation of divorce. Along with the Philippines, Malta was one of two countries in the world where divorce remained illegal.

“Abortion a phone call away”, headlines Newsweek Polska, noting that while Poland has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe (only Malta and Ireland have stricter legislation in this regard), “having an abortion is easier than ordering a pizza”. There are two possibilities: private clinics abroad, e.g. in Slovakia, or their domestic equivalents that advertise in euphemistic terms in newspapers. In either case the procedure will cost at least €500. Last week, the Polish parliament received a civic draft of a law providing for the complete banning of abortion, backed by 600,000 signatures. “There is no reason for the state to maintain a legal licence to kill”, says Mariusz Dzierżawski, the initiative’s author.

Opponents argue that more restrictive legislation will only cause the “abortion underground” to flourish. Officially, only 538 legal abortions were carried out in this country of 38 million inhabitants in 2010, but unofficial statistics from the Federation for Women and Family Planning estimate the number of Polish women who have an abortion at over 100,000 annually. This means, writes Newsweek Polska, that existing legislation, in place since 1993, which allows a pregnancy to be aborted in only three cases (rape or incest, serious risk to mother’s life or health, or permanent and irreversible damage to the foetus) “practically doesn’t work”. Recent poll shows that the Polish public is split almost evenly on the issue, with 45 percent supporting legal abortion and 50 percent in favour of an absolute ban.

The idea of legalising drugs has made the headlines of several European dailies – The Independent of London, Tageszeitung in Berlin and Libération in Paris – following the June 2 publication of a report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy calling for the end to the “war on drugs”. The report also called for a global debate on alternative policies.  The authors of the report (former presidents, well-known writers, UN officials) must be heard because “they are neither raging pot-heads nor free-market zealots,” Libération argues. “Repression and prohibition of users and dealers has failed,” the paper continues, noting that considering only repression or depenalisation is not the solution either. “Only differentiating between different categories of users, of which many are ill, can begin to provide a solution that is both legal and morally responsible,” concludes Libération.

“’Rape is rape’ – (Radio Presenter) – ‘No, it’s not’” (Kenneth Clarke), headlines the Independent, quoting an interview which has provoked a national outcry. The British Justice Secretary was defending a plan to reduce jail sentences by up to 50% for early guilty pleas, a plan which could also include rape cases, but provoked outrage by appearing to suggest “that some rapes were less serious than others,” the London daily writes. The Justice Secretary was seeking to distinguish between what he termed “serious” rapes and “date” rapes when, under questioning, he rejected the assertion that “Rape is rape”. "No it's not,” he said. “And if an 17-year-old has sex with a 15-year-old and she's perfectly willing, that is rape [i.e. this type of case constitutes a rape in legal terms, since the UK age of consent is 16].” On the issue of sentencing, he then said, “No one is saying a serious, proper rape case is going to be let out of prison after 12 months." Lambasted on all side by women’s groups, the opposition Labour party, and the media for taking the rape issue lightly, “there is growing speculation he will be moved from the Ministry of Justice,” the London daily notes.

“Rabbis worried over ban on ritual slaughter,” headlines De Volkskrant. On 12 April, a group of senior rabbis from several European countries organised a press conference in Schiphol (near Amsterdam) to express their opposition to a proposed ban on ritual slaughter that will be debated by the Dutch parliament on 13 April. As it stands, abattoirs are obliged to anaesthetise animals before slaughtering them, but an exception is made for ritual slaughter, used by Jews and Muslims, which forbids the use of anesthetics. For this reason that a number of political parties are arguing that ritual slaughter causes unnecessary suffering. The newspaper reports that in the Netherlands, approximately two million animals are slaughtered without anesthetics every year. Several European countries, including Sweden, Norway, Austria, Estonia and Switzerland, have already introduced similar bans. 

“Is the West finished?” asks French weekly Courrier International in its latest special edition. With the U. S. economy hotly pursued by Asia, Europe increasingly pushed into the background on the international stage, and “emerging” countries turning into “conquerors,” the West is now in palpable decline both economically and politically”, the magazine writes. “Without lamenting it or playing Cassandra,” the weekly attempts to grasp the challenges of a new international climate, a “turning point” that for some is the twilight of Western civilisation while for others the “spread of Western values ​​in the world.” The reluctance of European and Americans to get involved in the situation in Libya “proves that the West has surrendered spontaneous leadership. And its place has been taken by others. Iran, China and Russia are already queuing up”, adds Polish weekly Wprost for its part, adding that “the West is no longer able to stand up as a defender of democracy, nor to scare anyone in any credible fashion.”

“Historians lambast the Bundestag,” headlines Gazeta Wyborcza, referring to the open letter signed by 68 historians from all over the world protesting the recent resolution passed by the Bundestag, the lower chamber of the German parliament, on Germans expelled after World War II from Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Among other things the resolution establishes an Expellees’ Day and recognises their 1950 Charter as a milestone in Germany’s reconciliation with its neighbours. Only, as Wyborcza notes, the Charter does not use the word “reconciliation” once and among its signatories are numerous former members of the Nazi party and the SS. “This resolution sends a false message from the point of view of both history and politics,” reads the letter (most of its signatories being German). The Warsaw daily stresses that the letter is a token of German society’s refusal to accept “historical manipulations” by politicians or attempts to “disavow Germany’s responsibility for starting the war, or to fail to mention its victims”. It also notes that true reconciliation began in 1965 with the Polish bishops’ letter to their German brothers including the historic words “We forgive and ask for forgiveness”.

Ein schöner Land ([There is] A nicer country), says the front page of Tageszeitung’s special issue on immigration and what it means “to be German” today. The headline is a twist on the title of a well-known German folksong, Kein schöner Land ([There is] No nicer country), which is often used ironically in theatre, songs and essays criticising the state of the German nation. The daily has invited over 50 authors to contribute, including Green MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit, social polemicist Thilo Sarrazin, president of the Federation of Expellees Erika Steinbach and Russian-born German writer Wladimir Kaminer. The TAZ calls on readers to come up with a replacement for the most controversial buzzword these days, Mensch mit Migrationshintergrund, literally “person with a migrant background”.