A challenge for the Norwegians first of all, who have had to relive the trauma of the attacks of July 22 (77 victims in Oslo and on the island of Utøya) and to put up with Breivik’s defiant attitude since the start of his trial. Breivik has not only expressed no remorse for his actions but has declared he would do it again; yet he was also given 75 minutes to read the 13 pages of text he had written to explain why he had done what he had.

For his fellow citizens, starting with the survivors and families of the dead, the trial is about resisting the temptation to take revenge, to trust to justice and to build up the antibodies to ensure that Breivik has no emulators.

It is thus a challenge for Europeans, since the media coverage of the Anders Breivik trial and the nature of the procedure (advertising the hearing, freedom of speech for the accused) have offered his ideas a soap box – "a trial is a golden opportunity,” Breivik wrote in the manifesto he posted on the internet before the attacks – that extend well beyond Norway.

However, a significant number of Europeans share these ideas – Islamophobia, xenophobia, hatred of the elites, of social democrats, of liberals and of muliti-culturalism. And it has been rare in Europe to see them displayed without censorship or limitation in a court and retransmitted urbi et orbi – to the city and to the world. In many countries, in fact, statements such as those of Breivik are criminalised because of their character – hateful, violent or inciting to hatred and violence.

Following the attacks, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, from the same Labour Party as the teenagers slaughtered on Utøya, had argued that the answer to Breivik was "more openness and more democracy." For his part, Eskil Pedersen, one of the survivors of Utøya, wrote on the eve of the trial: "It's good to see that the rule of law is working and that society is moving forward.”

And therein lies the Norwegian example: a democratic society, confident and built around an effective rule of law, fears neither those who want to question the principles on which it is based nor their words, because it has the legal tools – and especially the cultural tools – to protect itself. This is probably the main lesson to be learned from this case.

Geographically off-centre, the Norwegians live in a country sitting on oil reserves the management of which ensures them a more prosperous future than that of their neighbours.  Absent from the European scene after having refused twice to join the European Union (but it is part of the Schengen Area and of the European Economic Area), Norway was little talked about and one barely noticed that, since 2009, through the Progress Party, the extreme right is the country’s second largest political force.

Breivik’s 76 victims brutally linked Norway to the rest of Europe. In Italy and France, where some elected officials justified the killer, the Northern League and the National Front, until then both on the rise, will have to prove, at least for a while, that their attacks on Islam and on multi-culturalism are not associated with blind violence. In the Netherlands, the very media-friendly leader of the Party for Freedom, Geert Wilders, without whom the government would not hold, is under pressure because Breivik lauded him in his manifesto, published on Internet.

Over the last several years, the rise of populist and extreme-right wing parties was considered a European trend, but one fuelled by national circumstances against which no one was seeking a general response. With the tragedies in Oslo and Utoya Island, these parties are being held accountable, and the threat of extreme-right wing violence is felt everywhere in the same manner. This threat, long neglected by the concerned intelligence services which focused on the threat of Islamic radicalism, must be battled seriously, and by Europe as a whole. Radical and neo-Nazi movements are sufficiently well-known for this to be done rapidly.

But one must be careful not to mix everything up, a method preferred by populists and extremists. Anders Breivik’s actions are due in large part to personal folly, common to extremists and terrorists of all cultures, religions and political tendencies. And if Wilders, Marine Le Pen, Heinz Christian Strache in Austria or Siv Jensen (leader of the Norwegian Progress Party) attract so many voters, it’s because they know how to strike chords sensitive to the voters.

The response, at the European level, can only be political. It requires responding to the unease of the voters with ideas and acts on immigration and cohabitation between cultures, on globalisation, on the crisis and unemployment, as well as on the balance of power between politics and economics.

After the challenge, the response can also come from Norway. As Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said, “the response to violence is greater democracy”.

Translated from the French by Pat Brett

“The United Kingdom does it. So does the Netherlands, and so too do Belgium, Norway and Denmark. Following a decision by the European Court of Human Rights, all five of these European Council countries are refusing to comply with the Dublin II regulation, which stipulates that asylum seekers have to wait for their asylum applications to be processed in the country where they enter the EU,” notes the Viennese daily.

According to a UN human rights expert, the asylum system in Greece has been overwhelmed to the point where refugees of all ages are likely to spend six months behind bars. Conditions in the detention camps are degrading and represent a potentially fatal risk to health, and the backlog of cases in the judicial system has meant that asylum seekers must wait for months to have their claims heard.

“The asylum crisis in Greece has become a painful problem for the EU,” points out Der Standard, because the EU27 will now have to find a solution to “humanise” the Dublin II system. On 28 October, the German Constitutional Court is to begin deliberations on the issue of whether Berlin has the right to automatically expel refugees to other EU countries without allowing them a hearing. Since 2009, the Karlsruhe court has ruled against 13 deportations to Greece, and the country’s appeal courts have also found in favour of refugees in more than 300 other cases. The Constitutional Court’s decision is expected in 2011.

The Swiss Confederation is not the only European country to avoid the sport of putting all of one's eggs into a single basket. To the north, Norway, which has since 1992 been a part of the European Economic Area (the EEA, composed of the 27 member states plus Liechtenstein and Iceland), holds on to its cherished independence, while adopting nearly all European community directives. Sweden has refused to adopt the euro, but certain rebel Swedish cities in fact freely use it. The United Kingdom plays both sides of the European membership question with disconcerting ease: "I am part of the Union, but I don't want its single currency, which doesn't mean that I can't have my say." In short, for many countries it is a case of "I love you, but marrying you is out of the question".

Membership in the Union is not - and must not become - obligatory, but it doesn't seem to have the same meaning for members and their neighbours: there are those who swear by the Union, those who take it half-seriously, and those who reap some benefits by association... the list of variations is long.

Instead of following the example of Norway, which is, in the words of editor Eva-Lie Nielssen, a "clandestine passenger in the EU, but with a business class seat", wouldn't it be better to acknowledge this state of affairs and propose a series of options for limited membership in the Union, such as the adoption of its single currency? It would be like riding in the same train, but not necessarily in the same car, and perhaps not even in the same class. And countries could simply choose the dishes they prefer from the European menu. Iulia Badea Guéritée

All the countries ringing the Arctic Ocean – Denmark (via Greenland), the United States, Russia, Norway, and Canada – have territorial claims on the area, Politiken points out. With the question unresolved, each is beginning to "get prepared" – military-wise. Politiken judges the matter one for the United Nations to settle, observing that Denmark, which has "a long tradition of respect for international public law and the United Nations as an institution," could very well "take the initiative" and present a resolution.