In several Danish towns, efforts to integrate young Somalis into Danish society have been hampered by a coterie of fundamentalist compatriots. The latter seek to indoctrinate Somalis so as to exercise social control over the expat community, especially in Copenhagen, Århus, Aalborg and Odense. Somalisk Netværk i Danmark (Somali Network in Denmark) has submitted a series of proposals to integration minister Birthe Rønn Hornbech aimed at thwarting the fundamentalists.

In an in-depth feature, Politiken explains that according to Somalisk Netværk president Mohamed Gelle – himself the target of a fatwa – a cabal of 15 to 20 militant Somali Islamists have launched a drive to recruit young compatriots for Al-Qaeda-affiliated cells by bringing pressure to bear on their families (whether in Denmark or Somalia) and by indoctrinating them in radical Islam. There are 16,700 Somalis currently living in Denmark.

An unprecedented scandal has hit the German Catholic Church and its “sanctimonious hypocrites”, as Der Spiegel calls them on this week’s cover. After revelations that pupils were sexually abused in the 1970s and ’80s by three of their teachers at Canisius, an upmarket Roman Catholic secondary school, "the omerta [code of silence in the Mafia] that has reigned for decades is now crumbling”, reports the German magazine. According to a Spiegel investigation of 27 German dioceses, at least 94 clerics and lay staff are suspected of having sexually abused untold number of minors since 1995 in the 24 dioceses that responded to the survey. The German Bishops Conference is to address the matter shortly. But, as the weekly observes, "the clergy are far from undertaking any real condemnation of their own conduct”. Germany, where the Church has invariably practised a policy of “transferring” the perpetrators and “playing for time”, is only “just beginning to wake up” after the ecclesiastical sex scandals in the US and Ireland.

“Ukraine is changing course”, headlines Gazeta Wyborcza, reporting on Viktor Yanukovych’s victory in the second round of presidential elections on 7 February. Yanukovych defeated Yulia Tymoshenko, one of the leaders of Orange Revolution that prevented him from taking power in 2004. In an editorial the Warsaw daily observes that “the Ukrainians elected a president who seemed evil incarnate five years ago. They opted for post-Soviet stability rather than European unpredictability.” Borys Tarasyuk, former foreign affairs minister, believes that social conflict in Ukraine will intensify now as the pro-Moscow Yanukovych plans to make Russian the second official language and allow the Russian Black Sea fleet remain in Crimea.

These fears are not shared by Cornelius Ochmann, expert from Germany’s Bertelsmann Foundation : “He will continue to modernize the country, and nobody can stop the growth of free media and private economy. Nor will he bury Ukraine’s European aspirations – as the country’s integration with the EU is a matter of decades rather than years”.