First declared unconstitutional in 2010, the law was revised in February 2012 at the request of the ruling Democrat-Liberal Party. The proposed bill was then approved by parliament.

"Demanded insistantly by civil society, supported by politicians in election campaigns, the law now risks being buried for good," regrets România Liberă. This is not surprising, because in its new incarnation the law included former prosecutors. "With, among them, perhaps some judges on the constitutional court," the paper suggests.

Adopting it now that it cannot produce significant results is akin to someone trying to commit suicide by jumping on the tracks after the train has already passed.

The verdict is mainly symbolic: of the four defendants only General Czesław Kiszczak received a two year jail sentence – suspended on account of his advanced age – 86. His superior, General Wojciech Jaruzelski and former defence minister General Florian Siwicki were excluded from the proceedings on health grounds. Meanwhile, Siwicki’s deputy General Tadeusz Tuczapski died during the trial. 

Thirty years were needed for “historical justice to be done”, comments Polska The Times, noting that the court rejected General Jaruzelski’s argument that martial law prevented an “inevitable” intervention by Warsaw Pact forces.

The legacy of martial law, which cost a dozen lives and led to the internment of 10,000 people in prison camps, has long been a bone of contention between Polish political parties. An “effective tool in political struggles of the last two decades”, notes Gazeta Wyborcza:

Nobody wanted to look at it with the cold eye of a researcher. ... [The law] was used to kindle political hysteria rather than to understand history...

Meanwhile conservative daily Rzeczpospolita has hailed the verdict as crucial for “all history lessons future generations will take”.

For columnist Sabina Fati, "Dictators continue to exert an appeal even after their death. However, democratic governments avoid entering into a spiral of posthumous fascination.” She also points out that tourist initiatives that focus on dictatorships in other countries, like Germany and Serbia, tend to be "organised by the far left – the glorification of the Berlin Wall – or private entrepreneurs – Tito’s 'Blue Train'". However, "No government minister in Madrid would ever dream of creating a tourist trail that followed in the footsteps of Franco."

The French press has yet to respond to the revelations, which have come in the wake of several mysterious burglaries involving the theft of computers owned by journalists investigating the Bettencourt affair: a political-financial scandal surrounding the Minister of Labour, Eric Woerth, and the L’Oréal heiress. A few weeks ago, the daily Le Monde filed suit, because the secret service had been used to trace sources consulted by the newspaper’s journalists working on the story. Libération reminds its readers that in the spring of this year, secret service operatives were ordered to identify the source of rumours, which claimed that France’s First Lady, Carla Bruni, was having an affair.

In Romania, controversy is brewing over the regular publication by the press of wiretap transcripts involving businessmen and the country’s politicians. Headlining with "Wiretaps, from one dictatorship to the next," Jurnalul Naţional notes that this type of surveillance is a long-standing tradition in Romania, where it was deployed by the communist party "to provide regular updates on targets’ levels of patriotism and devotion to the cause."

On a more general note, Jurnalul Naţional points out that “wiretaps are deployed by governments who want to sit back in office," and an obsession with surveillance is typical of excessively powerful centralized regimes. In Romania, "progress from one generation to the next has not put an end to the use of wiretaps in a state which has genetic predisposition to eavesdropping".

The governmental measures, which Gândul describes as "an absolute priority," are to be implemented in exchange for a loan granted by the International Monetary Fund a year ago. News of the demonstration, which is the largest protest to have taken place in the country since the revolution of 1989, eclipsed reports of a parliamentary vote on a new lustration bill, which will now make it impossible for former members of the communist party to be appointed to certain kinds of public office.

According to Hospodářské Noviny, Filip simply wants to reiterate regrets expressed by the Czechoslovakian Communist Party in 1989, and the business daily warns that "communists still believe that the oppression exercised by the totalitarian regime was necessary at the time." It concludes that the initiative will not be a real apology, but an "empty political gesture that aims to obtain a scrap of power," which may nonetheless prove to be successful.

Both Kolakowski and Geremek grew up in wartime Poland, the latter “witnessing life and death in the Warsaw ghetto.” While Germany’s Ralf Dahrendorf, as a 15 year-old, was involved in a schoolboys' anti-Nazi resistance movement. Drawing from such experience each of them, argues Garton-Ash, contributed to the free Europe we live in today. Since “we children of luckier times” must sustain Europe without the “elemental drive that comes from personal experience,” we need, he concludes, “more and better history”. “History brought home with individual human stories.”