Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt, who shot themselves after a failed robbery last week, and Beate Z., who handed herself into the police, have apparently been active for 14 years without coming to the attention of the authorities. In a DVD found this weekend they argue that “as long as there are no fundamental changes in politics, the press and freedom of expression, the activities will go on.” Suddenly the German press is seeing “all the pieces of a puzzle fall into place.”

Tageszeitung, the newspaper of the alternative left established in 1979 in response to the wave of assassinations by the RAF, takes the view that lapses at Germany’s internal intelligence permitted the more recent crimes to happen and condemns a “failure of the state”.

It’s something we don’t want to imagine: a Nazi terrorism, permitted by the state, in Germany, six decades after the end of the National Socialist dictatorship.

For its part, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that the authorities had ruled out racial motivations and terrorism in the crimes committed over the past few years.

For decades, left-wing extremists in Germany were deemed intelligent and dangerous, while right-wing extremists were taken to be stupid and therefore harmless.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wonders if Berlin hasn’t made the mistake of treating right-wing terrorism “as the dim-witted provincial counterpart of predominantly Islamist terrorism,” and questions the importance and the meaning of the existence of this small group.

To compare it with the Red Army Faction is to both minimise and exaggerate its seriousness. Minimise, because the RAF never managed to operate over the years without being recognised. Exaggerate, because no one could perceive this supposed terrorism from the far right as such, as not only the act but also the public claim to have carried it out is part of the terrorism. And that was missing from the ‘Zwickau cell’.

Spanish democracy has triumphed against the fanatics, who, by arrogating to themselves the mantle of representation of the Basque nation that the Basque people never gave to them, have killed over 800 people… The most tragic problem that Spanish democracy has suffered has now vanished, not because peace has come, but because a sect of fanatics has given up waiting for Spanish democracy to quit the fight. This is the strongest reason to be proud today, but also to remember and to mourn the many people [killed].

El Mundo, headlining with “ETA plays its cards with an eye to elections”, stresses the importance of electoral gains that the ETA statement will give its political arm in the legislative elections coming up on November 20:

One must be cautious, however, for the collective fascination with a Spain free of car bombs has been felt before. Today's announcement is even more dangerous, given its timing just a month before the elections, when the political arm of ETA [the Amaiur coalition, which will join together Bildu and other groups of the Abertzale] will seek to win many seats in order to launch its separatist challenge in Parliament [...]. The absence of attacks does not mean that ETA has disappeared. We will believe this when it surrenders its weapons and disappears without any political pay-off.

Over at La Vanguardia, which headlines - “Faced with surrender, prudence and political talent prevail”, an editorialist writes:

ETA is laying down its weapons because its methods were irrational, its structures increasingly enfeebled under the pressure of law enforcement, and because Basque and Spanish society first, and then its own entourage, rendered it impotent […]. A period of dialogue will now open, to discuss the handing over of weapons and explosives, and in which the state will have to re-examine the status of ETA prisoners with firmness, but with generosity too. This difficult task will fall to the government that emerges from the elections of 20 November.

“ETA will neither disband nor hand in its weapons,” headlines ABC, whose editorial “honours the victims”:

This is not the time to abandon the need for justice that ETA's victims deserve, in honour of whom it may be written that this perhaps is the epilogue of the terrorist gang [...]. Generosity, in the form of memory, justice and reparations, are due only to the victims.

The Basque newspaper El Correo leads with “At last”. The declaration of October 20, writes the paper, is a decision that ETA “should have taken decades ago.” The reasons:

... its extreme weakness after the blows [dealt by the police] and the fact that the leftist Abertzale [the left-wing nationalist Basque movement] eventually won the power struggle for leadership of the independence movement, with 'Bildu's magnificent results' in the municipal elections of last May.

Finally, an editorial in Gara, a daily close to the separatist left, writes -

Now it's time to show that without violence everything is possible. Only Basque society can ensure that it will be able to vote to decide what it wants to be in the future.

However, as Timothy Garton Ash has pointed out, the ten years that have passed since 9/11 have also, and perhaps more importantly, been marked by a long-term tectonic shift that has radically altered the balance of power on the planet: the rise of China and Asia, and the progressive weakness of the West, which has been accelerated by the economic crisis.

How is Europe situated with regard to these historic frameworks? The fact that we might even ask such a question, is a clue to its answer – which necessarily must take into account Europe’s current inability to influence world events. At the same time, the decade since 9/11 has also been rich in lessons for our continent.

In 2001, the EU comprised just 15 member states, and its enlargement to include 25 and then 27 members highlighted a fault line that was exacerbated by 9/11: its relationship with the United States. Let’s not forget that in 2003, the Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis that opposed the war in Iraq was countered by a London-Rome-Madrid axis, which was also supported by the former Soviet bloc countries that were preparing to join the Union. If Europe’s external policy had been decided by a majority vote, in accordance with the logic of a community of states, then Europe’s flag would have flown in Iraq alongside America’ Stars and Stripes.

9/11 also contributed to the United States’ growing indifference to Europe and cast doubts on the appropriateness of the current form of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which further highlighted Europe’s inability to develop its own strategic vision and to support it with a proper defence policy. The manner in which Washington succeeded in establishing its missile-defence system on European territory without consulting the EU was an apt illustration of this problem, as was Germany’s abstention on the issue of intervention in Libya.

Although not many of us may remember, 2001 was also the year in which the 15 member states of the time created the Convention on the Future of Europe. Ten years later, in the wake of the stillborn emergence of the European Constitution and the painful adoption of the Lisbon Treaty, Europe has yet to speak with a strong single voice and no one, including its political leaders, has succeeded in presenting a project that responds to the new world order. At a time when some commentators and leaders have called for a new treaty to be established in response to the financial crisis, this observation remains a highly relevant one.

Translated from the French by Mark McGovern

Along similar lines, Basque daily El Correo expresses its “relief” for “the thousands of threatened individuals, who can now face the days ahead more calmly”, but stresses that “ETA has announced a ceasefire, not its disappearance”. "The problem is that the communiqué is not satisfactory in terms of the goal of a definitive end to the terrorist threat,” the Bilboa daily complains, falling as it does far short of the demands laid down by the courts for lifting the ban on the left-wing abertzale (Basque for “patriot”) separatist parties, including Batasuna, ETA’s political wing.

Leading with the portraits of 12 ETA victims since its last ceasefire of 2006/2007 ("12 reasons not to believe ETA") Madrid daily ABC is likewise sceptical, opining that "ETA keeps trotting out its usual arguments”, the same ones that led the Spanish government to enter into "disgraceful negotiations" in 2005-2007. ABC describes ETA’s gesture as a “mere smokescreen” put up to enable the left-wing separatists to take part in the upcoming May elections. Público, for its part, argues that ETA’s “political demands”, which amount to a "political price exacted by the gang for it to lay down its arms”, are superfluous, and the paper regrets that “two words are missing in the communiqué: definitive and irreversible".

At the meeting, which was attended by the US Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, the Europeans decided to reinforce checks in airports. But, as El Periódico notes, the resolution adopted was a compromise, "allowing Europe to postpone discussion on the installation of body scanners," and at the same time including a commitment to make use of high technology in line with the strategy adopted by the US.