For Eleftherotypia, the government's decision to shut down Greek public television and radio broadcaster ERT, after only few hours notice notice on June 11, was tantamount to “an execution”. At 11 PM, Greeks suddenly discovered in a farewell broadcast from the journalists of the channel that the government “in an unprecedented move – and not just for Greece – had shut down public broadcasting in the blink of an eye", writes the newspaper. On hearing the news, thousands of people gathered before the ERT to demonstrate. Private channels also stopped broadcasting for a few hours in solidarity.

According to Eleftherotypia —

… the Prime Minister's had been considering the decision for some time, because closing down the public body would enable it to meet the troika's demand to lay off 2,000 civil servants. And so it did just that, sending 2,656 employees to the unemployment lines.

For the Athens daily, this hasty decision poses —

… an enormous problem for democracy by diminishing the plurality of information sources. The Greek people have the right to – and must have – an impartial, high quality public broadcaster.

"There were many things that were not going well at ERT", admits I Kathimerini. However, the daily continues —

For a long time successive governments, which felt that they had a clientele to keep happy and money to burn, treated it like most of the public sector. Its 19 local radio stations were marked by an intolerable level of mismanagement. […] But there were also many reasons to cherish ERT, which continued to make exceptional documentaries at a time when hardly anyone else in Greece was producing the goods, and its stations broadcast music that no one else would have aired.

Regarding the way the shutdown was carried out, the economic daily decries the fact that there was —

… neither a debate in Parliament nor a public debate, and no green light from the coalition partners – the New Democracy, the Socialists and the Democratic Left. Instead, it was done by legislative decree. The government spokesman was able to announce on TV that ERT had become a bottomless pit, which ate up €300m a year and produced mismanagement and inefficiency instead of good programming. […] ERT is one of many cases that the parties would like to sweep under the rug. What better way than to proceed with the shutdown of the broadcaster when the troika [of creditors] is in Athens and asking about the coalition’s pledge to lay off 2,000 civil servants by the summer?

For its part, the government has assured the nation that the closure is temporary, and that it will create a "new structure" "as soon as possible". Eleftherotypia believes that a bill on creating NERIT AE (a new Greek radio, internet and television broadcaster with a "much smaller" staff) is in the works. To protest against the closure of ERT, the country’s major public and private unions have announced a 24-hour general strike on Thursday.

In a verdict announced on May 13, the federal court in Germany ruled that Google's auto-complete system, which automatically generates search suggestions, infringes the rights of individuals and companies.

To illustrate the issue, the compact edition of Die Welt publishes the suggestions prompted by a search on Angela Merkel —

Angela Merkel / Angela Merkel naturism / Angela Merkel twitter / Angela Merkel CV / Angela Merkel swimsuit / Angela Merkel Joachim Sauer [Angela Merkel’s husband] / Angela Merkel thesis / Angela Merkel private / Angela Merkel contact / Angela Merkel holidays

“In this case, the search terms added by Google are moderate and amusing,” notes the daily. But from now on Google will be obliged to remove them if someone believes his or her rights are being infringed.

The court ruled in favour of a businessman who sued Google for automatically associating “scientology” and “fraud” with his name.

Marking World Press Freedom day on May 3, the Turin daily is publishing a special edition dominated by a photo of its war correspondent Domenico Quirico, who has been missing in Syria for 3 weeks, and the yellow ribbon symbolising the campaign for his release.

“An international effort to make the the regimes limiting press freedom feel the pressure of public opinion may make a difference,” writes editor in chief Mario Calabresi in his editorial.

In a guest column, Reporters sans frontiéres Secretary General Christophe Deloire celebrates “our heroes”, the journalists who risk their freedom and life to “defend our right to keep our eyes open.” Among them is Mazen Darwish, the jailed head of the Syrian media centre who was awarded the organisation’s press freedom prize in 2012.

In an email addressed to Politiken, European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Viviane Reding has “accused the Danish government of stalling negotiations on the project for harmonised regulation on the protection of personal data”, which are underway in Brussels.

“The proposed European regulation is supposed to reinforce consumers’ control over their data and to simplifiy the rules for companies,” explains the daily.

The Danish Minister for Justice Morten Bødskov has argued that the text does not sufficiently take into account differences in existing rules in different countries, and that it does not offer users sufficient protection.

The daily illustrates the topic with a cartoon about the case of a retired teacher whose Facebook account became associated with a brand of vibrator when she clicked “like” for a site that mainly sells kitchen utensils.

Six of Europe’s largest data protection agencies launched a joint legal case against Internet search giant Google on April 2 over alleged breaches of EU privacy regulations. The action by France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK is the first such coordinated privacy action by EU member countries against a company. The European Commission reported in 2012 that Google’s privacy policy did not comply with European law because it failed to sufficiently inform users of the data being gathered, and set a four-month deadline for the firm to update its policy. This has now expired without any policy shift from Google. Outlining the penalties Google may face, The Financial Times says –

European watchdogs can currently impose only fines below €1m but new EU-wide rules could soon empower them to inflict on companies penalties up to 2 per cent of their global annual turnover. In Google’s case that would add up to about $760m (€594m), based on its 2011 revenues. The new rules could be approved by the end of this year by EU lawmakers and member states.

While The Daily Telegraph underlines the different attitudes to privacy in the US compared to Europe, writing –

It would probably be too cynical to suggest that Europe’s adversarial approach to Google is, in some quarters, driven by crude anti-Americanism. A different attitude to privacy is ingrained into German culture, for instance. But it is also obvious that, even with the enormous scale of the common market, Europe will always be a secondary market for Google compared with the US. If regulators make it harder for the company to operate in Europe, it is easy enough for it to simply switch bits off. So, should you wake up one day to find that Street View is not available, but Microsoft’s equivalent is, you would have European regulators to thank for that surprising monopoly.

The UK’s main three political parties, the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats, are rumoured to have agreed a deal on press regulation, following the conclusion last year of the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics.

The Inquiry recommended establishing a new independent press watchdog backed by law. Prime Minister David Cameron has resisted calls for such a watchdog, as have most newspapers. Details of the plan were expected to be announced today and put to a vote by MPs this afternoon.

Beside a photograph of UK WWII prime minister Winston Churchill, The Sun urged MPs “not to shame Britain by throwing away 318 years of Press freedom.”

The Budapest labour and public administration tribunal ruled on March 5 to invalidate an order preventing Hungarian radio station Klubrádió from applying to renew its licence to broadcast on its current frequency.

The order, which was issued in 2011 by the National Media and Infocommunications Authority (NMHH), a body largely staffed by supporters of Viktor Orbán’s conservative government, was viewed as an attempt to censor the opposition radio channel, which has more than 400,000 listeners a day.

In 2012, Klubrádió’s case was upheld by four court rulings. However, these were never applied by Hungary’s Media Council.

“Europe is threatening to punish Google for its use of personal data,” announces Le Monde. At an Article 29 Working Party meeting held on February 18, Europe’s national data protection agencies approved a plan to take action against the American group on February 26.

The European privacy watchdogs believe that the search engine giant’s use of personal data “does not comply with European law.” France’s Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), which is the current president of the Article 29 Working Party, had warned “Google to ensure compliance by February 15, 2013”. But faced with “Google’s display of bad grace,” the CNIL has decided to take the matter further.

The goal of the procedure is to decide on a punishment “before the summer”. If the 27 national data watchdogs agree, fines will then be imposed by each national jurisdiction. In France for example, Google may have to pay as much as €300,000 for each non-compliant service.

In their report presented yesterday to the European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, the High Level Group of experts set up to analyse media pluralism in Europe recommends, among other things, giving the European Union more powers to ensure that the freedom of the press is respected in all countries as well as on the Internet.

The report, which focuses on the media situation in Hungary, but also in France and Italy, proposes harmonising national legislation (in particular on data protection and defamation issues), since European media operate in an environment without borders.

“There are sound reasons for the EU to review safeguards for press freedom and media plurality," writes the Financial Times: "Some newer member states, Hungary in particular, have in recent times taken steps that gravely threaten press independence. But there is a contradiction in wanting to defend this fundamental principle while at the same time giving Brussels greater powers over Europe's media.

Giving the commission oversight of media councils would just open the door to a new kind of interference – from Brussels [...] There are better ways to ensure that press regulators are not mere puppets of the state. Europe's charter of fundamental rights, which demands that members respect media freedom and plurality, became law in 2009. Violations can be addressed through judicial channels. The challenges presented by countries such as Hungary demonstrate that more effective tools are needed to deter governments bent on rolling back democratic rights. Europe suffers by not having a graduated range of responses to violations, such as the right to withdraw certain funds if governments overstep the line […] However, making Brussels media's new master is not the way to guarantee a free and vibrant press.

The 2,000-page document described an industry in which corruption and harassment – bordering on persecution – was commonplace, and concluded by recommending a new independent regulator, backed by legislation. Newspapers spoke with one voice, backing the need for reform but rejecting his legal framework to underpin the system, which they felt would undermine the freedom of the press to hold the powerful to account.

According to Philip Stephens in the Financial Times –

The Daily Telegraph’s leader echoed the criticism of the idea of a legally backed regulator, saying –

While The Sun, sister title of Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, which was shut in the wake of the phone hacking scandal, added –

The BBC faces the deepest crisis in its history with this weekend’s dramatic resignation of its director general, George Entwistle, after just 54 days in the job. Entwistle quit after it emerged on Friday that the BBC had wrongly implicated Lord McAlpine, a former senior Conservative party politician, in a story about paedophilia. This was the second scandal to have hit the BBC in recent weeks, after it emerged that Newsnight, its flagship current affairs programme, had hushed up allegations of paedophilia against a now dead TV star, Jimmy Savile.

As the British media eagerly dissects yet another high level resignation this morning, that of BBC's director of news, Helen Boaden, and fulminates against Entwistle’s £450,000 (€562,000) payout, The Independent notes that the shenanigans of recent weeks have been an “absolute gift” for the “BBC's enemies” –

They are legion on the right, and have been thirsting for years to see the corporation well and truly skewered for what they are convinced is its pro-European, anti-Tory, and generally soft, soggy-left, bias.

The danger now is that of a kind of witch-hunt gathers pace, each resignation fuelling suspicion that someone else less deserving has been allowed to remain at his or her post, thus feeding the clamour for more victims.

Such sentiments are expressed by the Conservative party’s mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who in his weekly Daily Telegraph column lambasts the BBC for journalism of a standard “so shoddy, so cretinous”, and whose practititioners are now “interviewing each other in a ludicrous orgy of self-pity.”

The BBC owes it to McAlpine to grovel and keep grovelling until the public gets the message. Everyone associated with the “paedophile” segment on Newsnight should be sacked instantly.

Meanwhile The Guardian warns that –

... there needs to be a sense of proportion. Yes, this is a genuine crisis for the BBC. It is difficult to excuse some of its recent mistakes of journalism and management. But it is still a trusted, reliable and internationally respected organisation which will survive and, under the right leadership, thrive.

“Our face of the crisis”, headlines Welt am Sonntag in an article on the German “covergirl” who has dominated the international media in recent years: Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In the latest example of this phenomenon, the cover of the August 10 edition of British magazine The Economist “was already a sensation before it hit newsstands”, remarks the Berlin newspaper. The same is true of the other front pages devoted to Merkel by Newsweek, the New Statesman (Terminator) and Time: or by those that represented her as a dominatrix in Poland and Spain, or as a Nazi in Greece. And while The Economist was taking yet another potshot at the Chancellor, Germany’s biggest magazine, Der Spiegel, came close to breaking sales records with a front cover devoted to the 50th anniversary of the death of the writer Hermann Hesse. “Merkel sells. – But not in Germany”, points out Welt am Sonntag –

Incredible but true: in the course of the euro crisis, not one German magazine has devoted its front cover to the chancellor who is at the eye of the storm. The historians of the future who sift through the archives to study the unification of Europe will be amazed to find that during the crisis the people of Germany bought newspapers about burglars and dog handlers.

In explaining this phenomenon, it is not enough to say that politics on the front cover does not sell in Germany. It is important to take into account the relationship between Germans and their chancellor as evidenced by the “warm and sympathetic” tone of the sole front page image of the chancellor published by Süddeutsche Zeitung magazine –

The report presents her as a sort of distant relative with an interesting job – and not as a chancellor who has to contend with a difficult period for the continent. And this suits Merkel, who believes that she can better do her job when she is not subject to too much scrutiny from the German people. [...] She is right. Germans believe that she is the right person to take on the crisis. But they do not want to look closely to verify that assumption.

On July 4 the European Parliament rejected the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) with an overwhelming majority of MEPs (478) voting against it (only 39 were for while 168 abstained). “It was the wrong solution to protect intellectual property", commented the EP’s president Martin Schulz after the vote.

At the beginning of the year, the agreement triggered mass protests, first on the street of Polish cities and later across Europe, notes Rzeczpospolita. The protesters feared that ACTA would hand over “exterritorial power to companies providing content for Internet and would make possible punishing users for sharing music or films even within the circle of friends”. As a result, Germany, Holland, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Czech Republic and Poland suspended ACTA’s ratification.

Rzeczpospolita stresses that even in case of ACTA’s rejection, there is still a theoretical chance that – provided the agreement has been modified – the European Commission might send it in again for ratification. However, MEPs have already warned they will not make do with cosmetic changes. In 2010 the EP rejected the SWIFT agreement and forced its renegotiation to include provisions increasing the protection of EU citizens’ privacy.

Five months after its initial appearance, a second edition of the Europa supplement jointly published by six major European newspapers –  Le Monde, El País, Gazeta Wyborcza, Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Guardian and La Stampa – has hit the news stands.

Focused on the “Generation ‘E’”, identified with the triptych of “education-euro-employment”, the supplement remarks that the young people born after the fall of the Berlin who grew up with the single currency, the Schengen area, and the Erasmus programme, have also had to contend with mass unemployment.

“If its not McDonald's, then what?” wonders the Polish version of the supplement, which has collected “stories from French, German, Italian, British and Spanish students who moved abroad – a positive choice that can come at a high cost.

How does this generation view the European project? For these young people, the EU is something taken for granted and not a dream: as the opinion polls have shown, for some it is even the subject of suspicion. The current European generation is the best educated, and the best qualified in history, but it is also the most disenchanted –  having suffered from the disparities in the various approaches adopted by governments and educational systems in their bid to adapt higher education to the needs of the labour market. Europa tells the story of Europe in 2012, a continent where institutional mechanisms and political leaders have failed to deliver on promises made to the young people.

Europe’s institutions appear intent on becoming fully fledged guardians of Internet user privacy. First up in the line of fire: ACTA and Google.  "European Parliament puts brake on international anti-piracy accord”, headlines El País, which reports that a petition signed by 2.5 million European citizens has been submitted to MEPs. The Madrid daily believes that it will take “at least a year” for ACTA to be ratified –

The European Parliament, which is not convinced that the text pays sufficient heed to the rights of citizens, has decided that it should be examined by European judges. MEPs are in agreement with the basic tenets of the trade agreement [...] but are wary of the consequences of its application.

El País notes that the debate which will precede a vote in parliament on 12 March will focus on –

… the bid to make Internet service providers responsible for we content, which opponents of the deal argue would open the door to digital censorship.

At the same time, The Guardian reports that European Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding has fired a warning shot at Google “sneaking citizens’ privacy away”. Criticism has been increasingly vocal since the launch of Google’s new policy on 1st March. The Guardian writes that the French data protection agency, the Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés, has already addressed a letter to the search engine giant to warn that its new rules on privacy are no longer in compliance with the requirements of the [1995] European directive on data protection –

While they simplify the joining process for new users, the changes also mean that Google can pool data about signed-in users' web or video searches, map directions, web browsing, which ads have been clicked, and other information in order to target adverts and services at people using the web.

"Transparency to what point?" asks French daily Libération. The question coincides with the publication of a book Sexe, Mensonges et Médias ("Sex, Lies and Media") by Jean Quatremer, Libération's correspondent in Brussels, on the Dominique Strass-Kahn affair. The book has reopened the debate on the attitude of the French press towards the private lives of politicians.

From François Mitterrand's prostate cancer and secret "love child" in the 1980s to the mid-1990s, to the abnormal behaviour of "DSK", the paper reviews all the cases to which the press was privy but kept silent. "The lies, the refusal to investigate...the taste for conniving with the powerful" – these bad habits of the French press are scrutinised by Quatremer, who, in 2007 when Strauss-Kahn was appointed as head of the International Monetary Fund, wrote -

The only real problem Strauss-Kahn has, is his relationship to women. Too pressing, he often comes close to crossing the line of harassment. This flaw is known to the media, but no one talks about it (we are in France).

These words went unnoticed until the man heralded by the opinion polls as the front-runner for the French Socialist Party candidacy for the 2012 election was arrested in New York and charged with attempted rape. "There is a before and an after DSK," Libération's leader says -

Our media's all too timid modus operandi can now be seen with a new eye. It is true that journalists are friends with politicians. 'Stay away from power!' is the primary principal, an American journalist used to say. In France, we have dinner together, we go on holidays together, we have love affairs, we are graduates of the same schools, and so on. There is no tradition of investigation into the private world of politics. [...] The public consequences of the President's private life have remained in the shadows. This is because of a preference for commentary over cold facts. And also because of the lack of independence of public television stations. Let us point out that the President of the Republic appoints the station's heads and choses, with his royal hand, the journalists who will be allowed the privilege of interviewing the monarch.

“The wave of social protests rolls across Europe. Poles have given example on how to fight ACTA”, headlines Rzeczpospolita, after demonstrations against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) were held in 150 cities last weekend, the largest of those in Germany and the Netherlands. The controversial multi-national agreement aims to establish international standards for intellectual property rights enforcement, but its opponents claim it will have adverse effects on civil and digital rights.

“They’ve followed Poland’s example”, Rzeczpospolita is happy to note, stressing that the first mass protests against ACTA took place in January in many Polish cities, forcing the government to “suspend” the process of the agreement’s ratification.

Now also Germany, one of the proposed legislation’s main advocates, is starting to wonder whether to ratify it and that, as we read in Polska The Times, means that the “ACTA is already dead”. The agreement’s demise will likely be signed and sealed in June by the European Parliament. According to the daily –

Politicians deserved their cold shower after forgetting that they should listen to the voice of the people.

Gazeta Wyborcza, in turn, notes that rejecting the ACTA will not bring us closer to ensuring that authors receive “fair compensation” –

Copyright law is imperfect and breeds pathologies [...] we can decide it is a harmful relic of the past and allow everyone to copy everything. But then we’ll need to devise a new way of rewarding creative work.

Six major European dailies, well-known to the readers of Presseurop -- Le Monde, El País, Gazeta Wyborcza, Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Guardian and La Stampa – are launching a joint project called Europa and scheduled for publication on Thursday. In this "State of the Union," as Italy's La Stampa headline dubbed it, the idea is "to reflect on the actual state of the EU, which, like never before, is at the centre of a thousand questions on its present and, most of all, its future".

Answering these questions in their articles and their analysis is the goal of the six papers' journalists and of contributing intellectuals and politicians. The six titles together represent over 10 million readers, points out Spain's El País.

Among the first to be published is British sociologist Anthony Giddens, Greek writer Petros Makaris, who paints a "bitter-sweet portrait of Brussels", and Italian author and semiologist Umberto Eco. The latter argues that "culture, beyond war, constitutes our identity". A culture he calls "shallow" and which "needs to be better rooted, before it is destroyed totally by the crisis".

As for the politicians, there are contributions from former prime ministers, Gordon Brown of Britain and Spain's Felipe González. But the key interview is accorded by "the leader that most represents the real power in Europe," Angela Merkel. The German Chancellor provides her vision of the future of Europe. "Over a long process," she says –

... we will transfer more powers to the [European] Commission, which will then handle what falls within the European remit like a government of Europe. That will require a strong parliament. A kind of second chamber, if you like, will be the council comprising the heads of [national] government. And finally, the supreme court will be the European court of justice. That could be what Europe's political union looks like in the future – some time in the future, as I say, and after a goodly number of interim stages.

"A monumental measure" for personal data protection on the internet will be proposed Wednesday by the European Union Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, writes Riccardo Luna, a specialist in new technologies, in Italian daily La Repubblica.

A measure that aims to forever change our understanding of personal data protection and which attempts, once and for all, to regulate the "right to be forgotten" in the web era. In other words: do we have the right to 'disappear' from the Web those things that concern us; that we have posted, perhaps long ago, but also those things posted by others that also embarrass us?

The answer is in two sets of regulations presented to the European Parliament. The first, a directive, concerns the use of personal data by the police and judicial authorities. The second is a regulation setting the procedures according to which private citizens will be able to manage the data concerning them in their relations with government offices, businesses and social networks. Sanctions, that can rise up to 1% of turnover, are possible in case of violations.

Will this be sufficient to ensure the "right to disappear"? Probably not, Luna writes on his blog:

The right to disappear from the Web doesn't exist, neither does the right to disappear from the world. In real life [...], you can try to disappear but there will always be documents that mention you, as well as other peoples' memories. These things cannot be erased with a click or with a European law nor even an intergalactic one. The right to erase oneself from Facebook [...], to browse without leaving a trace, [...], to be warned that our data is being saved and used for commercial purposes already exists and a detailed European law is not revolutionary, but simply reinforces a principle, a fundamental human right. [...] The right, on the other hand, to eliminate every article or blog entry which mentions you, as some are claiming, doesn't exist – that is called History.

Several days of internet user and web hacker protests against the ACTA agreement, which obliges its 39 signatory states to actively prosecute web piracy, “have had no effect”, writes Gazeta Wyborcza. Warsaw is to sign the document later this week. Fearing ACTA will restrict online freedom of speech, internet users and numerous organisations supporting them have for several days been blocking government websites.

On Saturday January 21, the Anonymous group carried out a successful denial-of-access attack on several major state websites and on Monday January 23 a movement calling itself the “Polish Underground” hacked the Prime Minister’s website to post a film of a video blogger known as “Baśka”, dressed up to resemble General Jaruzelski declaring martial law.

The anti-ACTA protesters accuse the government of having failed to consult the public on the agreement and are demanding an open debate on copyright laws that has already begun in the press. “In order to protect intellectual property, ACTA uses a nuclear bomb, the effects of the explosion of which are unpredictable”, warns Gazeta Wyborcza, suggesting the treaty should be reviewed by the European Court of Justice.

Headlining with "Brussels opposes Internet memory," Público reports that the European Commission is preparing to revise its 1995 directive on the protection of personal data in February of this year. The first draft of the new directive, to which the daily has had access, "contains a chapter on the right to be forgotten online." Público adds that "companies are dreading the new norms (...) for a reason that goes beyond the right to be forgotten: their potential economic impact." The newspaper cites the case of social network Facebook, which recently announced changes to its personal data policy designed to ensure compliance with legislation in Ireland, where the company has its European headquarters.

The proposed directive, which is centred on the deletion of data, also includes provisions for web users’ rights to "free speech" and "access" to data used by Internet companies, and procedures for "filing complaints" or "demanding the modification or deletion" of data. However, as Público notes, "legal and other experts have indicated that the same instrument that serves to protect privacy could be used to suppress freedom of speech on the net." Fines for companies that fail to respect the new norms could amount to as much as 5% turnover, points out Público.

"One hundred lashes if you don’t die laughing". The French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo [“Charlie Weekly”] features a cartoon Mohammed on its front cover, which has been renamed Sharia Hebdo in reaction to the 23 October victory of the Islamist Ennahda in Tunisian elections, and the announcement that sharia law is to be adopted in Libya. The prophet has even been designated editor in chief of this special edition.

Six years after the publication of the cartoons of Mohammed in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, the initiative has not been universally well-received: on the night of November 1st, the weekly’s offices were burned down, and its website was hacked. In 2006, Charlie Hebdo republished the Danish cartoons.

On 19 October, the European parliament announced the winners of its 2011 Prize for Journalism, which was attributed to France’s Romain Gubert (Print), Italy’s Massimiliano Nespola (Web), Finland’s Tero Koskinen (Television) and Germany’s Steffen Wurzel (Radio). Expressen reports that the four journalists were selected for their contribution to a “better understanding of EU institutions and policies” -- a fact which attracts the ire of the Swedish tabloid, which is not an admirer of Brussels. “The prize is unreasonable” because “the goal of journalism is not to enhance understanding of policies adopted by the EU, or its Byzantine bureacracy, but to investigate and to explain, which is an entirely different matter.”

“The EU does a lot of things that it should not do,” continues Expressen. “Presenting awards to journalists is one of these. It is not possible to safeguard the freedom of the press if at the same time you decide to reward those who write the ‘right things’ about the ‘right subjects.’”

Update October 21, 2011 – According to the blog La com européenne, the European Parliament has decided to abandon its prize for journalism.

“Public confidence in the 'digital authorities’ takes a blow”, leads NRC Handelsblad. A few days ago Holland’s Interior Minister, Piet Hein Donner, confessed that “the security of a large number of websites of the Dutch authorities cannot be assured.” The Dutch Certificate Authority, DigiNotar, responsible for security certificates for the Netherland’s taxation site, among others, was hacked last July by a group of Iranian hackers who went on to issue falsified digital certificates. “The authority lost 531 certificates, which Tehran has used to create many fraudulent sites,” writes the Rotterdam daily, likening the attack to “a burglary at the Central Bank of the Netherlands”. Perhaps, the paper muses, we should “once again fall back on regular mail and registered letters,” since “Internet users who trusted in the secure transfer of data with the state have lost their illusions.” In its editorial, NRC concludes: “The Internet is a public good and should be managed properly. However, this is obviously not happening.”

From today, Dutch Internet users will be able to avail of a “Don’t follow me” register to circumvent the harmful consequences of cookies, reports De Volkskrant. The service is accessible via a webpage that explains how cookies work and features a link to Youronlinechoices.eu, where web users can see what cookies are installed on their machines and access information on how to deactivate them. Similar services will shortly be made available in other European countries.

Along with a wide range of internet publishing companies, including a number of press groups, the newspaper’s website is participating in the launch of the initiative, which aims to show the Dutch government that “publishers and advertisers take web users’ privacy very seriously and that self-regulation could be an alternative to the cookie law currently awaiting approval from the Dutch senate. The controversial law, which will be the strictest in Europe, has caused concern among Internet companies who claim that it will reduce “the comfort of web users” and prompt major companies like Google and Yahoo “to withdraw from the Dutch market.” The Amsterdam daily explains that if the law is passed, “web users will have dozens of pop-ups to unclick” because “certain browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer have yet to be adapted to the new regulations.”

"Phone hacking: the smoking gun” headlines The Independent, reporting on the surveillance scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s News International group that forced the closure of the British tabloid News of the World in July. The centre-left daily devotes its front page to a scan of a letter written to News International bosses by Clive Goodman, a former journalist for News of the World who was imprisoned in 2007 for phone hacking. In it, Goodman claims that hacking was carried out “with the full knowledge and support” of senior journalists, and that it was discussed in editorial conferences. 

As the Independent points out, this not only implicates Andy Coulson, the paper’s editor at the time and later David Cameron’s communications director: it also “sheds doubt on key aspects” of Rupert and James Murdoch’s evidence to a committee of MPs last month. “No excuses. No delays,” fulminates the paper’s editorial. All three men must now “be summoned back to the House of Commons to explain themselves.”