“Fekter has established the basis for a generalised suspicion that foreigners are either illegal or criminals,” writes Die Presse, which notes that “civil rights are not the sole preserve of Austrian passport holders. If your daughter has a foreign friend, who happens to be African […], then your home can be searched for drugs. Who is to say that the authorisation to conduct searches without warrants will not be extended to target a wider range of unloved Austrians? A day will come when every Austrian who wants to remain above suspicion will have to have a policeman living in his house.”

The Brussels based website notes that civil liberties groups are far from happy with the development, arguing that the current draft proposal does away with pre-existing arrangements based on territoriality and “dual criminality” – i.e. “that the act for which information is sought must constitute a crime punishable in both states.”

The EUobserver explains that, “This would now mean that a person who committed an act which is legal in the member state where the act was carried out could, according to critics, be subject to body, house and business searches, financial investigations, and some forms of covert surveillance, if the act is regarded as a crime under the law of another member state.”

According to Fair Trials International, “The proposals are also completely one-sided. If you are under suspicion you will have no right to demand information from overseas police to prove your innocence.” The human rights charity predicts a Europe-wide scenario where inadequately protected citzens have sensitive personal information – such as recordings of bugged conversations, banking records and DNA – bandied around while national police are "powerless to refuse" information requests.

With the European Commission to give an opinion on the proposed directive in two months time, the EUobserver provides a provocative instance of how eventual legislation could be used. While Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany and 12 other EU countries, it does not constitute a crime in the UK, Sweden or Spain. “The EIO could thus in theory be used by Germany against someone who denied the Holocaust in a country where to do so is legal.”

same office, only this time as a civilian employee. I do more or less the same as before.” How do retired army and police officers get civilian jobs in the army? “You strike up acquaintances over years. If you do well by people, they won't let you die," explains a police officer who has just retired.

This week, Rzeczpospolita reports, the last conscripts left the barracks as the Polish armed forces became fully professional. However, while the army has no money to recruit conscripts returning to civilian life, it obviously finds enough to employ ex-officers receiving pension or disability benefits.

“Joachim Gatti is at least the seventh person to have lost an eye to this weapon,” inveighs Libération. “The use of flash-balls, like that of Tasers, has to be better regulated, and the police […] better trained.” The use of this firearm is actually confined to situations of legitimate self-defence, and aiming at the face or head is officially prohibited. For sociologist Fabien Jobard, “brutality is often the sign of police losing control over the situation.”