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.

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.

“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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.”

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.”

The case was a highly emotive one in the United Kingdom. In the wake of the murder, the News of the World, along with Sarah Payne’s mother, campaigned to enact “Sarah’s law”. “Her campaign to give parents the right to know if paedophiles were living in their area was championed by the NOTW, in particular by its former editor Rebekah Brooks.” At the same time, the News of the World controversially “named and shamed” alleged pedophiles, publishing their names and photographs on its front page. The Independent front page carries a photo of Payne’s mother side-by-side with Brooks. On 15 July Brooks resigned as chief executive of News International and was arrested and interviewed by police.

“Humble pie” headlines dominate the front pages of the British press. The Independent, however, chooses to highlight how the scandal is undermining British PM David Cameron, who had previously employed as his PR Andy Coulson, a former News of the World editor directly implicated in the affair. “Hacking crisis edges closer to Cameron,” the London daily leads, after it also emerged that Neil Wallis, the former News of the World deputy editor arrested last week, worked for Cameron’s Conservative Party before the 2010 election. “In a second blow to the Prime Minister,” the Independent continues, “it was revealed that his chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, had appealed to Scotland Yard not to mention hacking during a Downing Street briefing last September, four months before Mr Coulson quit his No 10 post.” With suggestions made that the PM had been briefed about the journalists’ involvement in the phone-hacking affair before employing them, his judgement is increasingly being questioned. The Independent notes that, “Loyalists believe the Prime Minister looks increasingly isolated and are concerned that cabinet members, including the Chancellor George Osborne and the Tory chairman Baroness Warsi, have failed to rally behind him”.

But for the Daily Mail, the “Real scandal that MPs ignore,” as its headline runs, is not this ongoing saga, nor the farcical scenes at the enquiry as a man threw a shaving foam pie at Rupert Murdoch, only to be punched by Murdoch’s wife Wendi Deng. “While Westminster fiddled over the phone-hacking frenzy, the European economy was burning last night,” the tabloid moans. “To add insult to injury, it emerged yesterday that those largely responsible for bringing Britain’s economy to its knees – bankers and finance workers – have scooped bonuses totalling £14billion this year.” Workers from the financial sector account for 4 per cent of the UK workforce, but obtain some 40 per cent of the bonuses paid. “The size of the massive windfall will outrage millions of hard-working Britons who face a daily battle to stay financially afloat during the economic downturn,” the Daily Mail writes, noting that some of the largest bonuses were paid out in banks partly owned by the state, and therefore by the taxpayer.

The Met chief’s resignation comes after a dramatic weekend which saw News International executive chief Rebekah Brooks quit her post. She was later arrested after being identified as a criminal suspect in Scotland Yard’s ongoing phone-hacking investigation. Brooks, along with News International’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, is due to appear before MPs on Tuesday 19 July to answer questions on the phone-hacking scandal. The Stephenson resignation spells yet more trouble for PM David Cameron, who employed as his PR former News of the World chief, Andy Coulson, also a prime suspect in the police inquiry. The Prime Minister is to “cut short his trade visit to Africa, abandoning a visit to Rwanda, to enable him to return home promptly to deal with the phone hacking scandal,” the London daily notes.

Neil Wallis, nicknamed ‘the Wolfman’ for his abrasive temperament, worked at the tabloid when it was first investigated for phone hacking in 2006, and was employed by the police in 2009-10 to advise on public relations. He was arrested and questioned this week as part of the new investigation. The revelation of Wallis’s employment, says the Telegraph, has led to further accusations of an improper relationship between the police and Murdoch’s paper. And the commissioner’s critics are not satisfied by his statement that he “does not believe” he acted inappropriately. “This smacks of collusion,” said Chris Bryant, an opposition MP who claims to have had his phone hacked by the News of the World.

While the daily stresses that “the catastrophic fall-off in advertising” was the final blow for the News of the World, The Independent believes that “the newspaper has been sacrificed for one woman” – its former head, Rebekah Brooks, very close to Murdoch, who still leads News Corp’s UK newspaper division.

Now that Ryan Giggs’ lawyers have launched legal proceedings against Twitter, the debate on privacy vs freedom of expression continues to rage. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, Lord Wakeham, the former chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, describes the rash of privacy injunctions granted by the courts as “intolerable”, and calls for changes to the UK’s 1998 Human Rights Act, whose provisions leave “judges the power to decide what the public should and should not know.” Wakeham calls on parliament to amend the law so that judges can only grant injunctions where issues “impact on public authorities and the State”.