For the influential business weekly, the choice is simple, either a break-up of the euro, or a move towards closer European integration – even if only ”technocratic and limited”:

 

For two crisis-plagued years Europe’s leaders have run away from this choice. They say that they want to keep the euro intact – except, perhaps, for Greece. But northern European creditors, led by Germany, will not pay out enough to assure the euro’s survival, and southern European debtors increasingly resent foreigners telling them how to run their lives.

But if the EU’s leaders were to choose a euro break-up –

… banks and firms across the continent would topple because their domestic and foreign assets and liabilities would no longer match. A cascade of defaults and lawsuits would follow. Governments that run deficits would be forced to cut spending brutally or print cash.

This is one of the reasons for which, the august journal “reluctantly” concludes that “the nations in the euro zone must share their burdens.”

Saving the euro is desirable and it is doable. One question remains: will Germans, Austrians and the Dutch feel enough solidarity with Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese and Irish to pay up? We believe that to do so is in their own interests. The time has come for Europe’s leaders, and Mrs Merkel in particular, to make that case.

At a time when "pensions and labour laws are violated and while demonstrations and riots spread from one member country to another" the only contribution that the manifesto proposes to rebuild the Union from the bottom up consists of "having the right to a sabbatical year of voluntary work in another EU country" quips the newspaper, which then asks:

Is the only response from these friends of Europe, when the Union is shuddering like the Titanic, that we must spend a little more time together so that we feel European?

And the newspaper concludes in the same tone: "It's probably no coincidence that this initiative is supported by the Allianz Group [a German insurance company] – one of Greece's main creditors."

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.