European Press Review: Outrage over Legal Immunity to Italian PM

"When will Italy wake up?" asks Switzerland's Tagesanzeiger. For two years the country has been ruled with undisguised stubbornness by someone who has been inventing laws according to his own gusto, says the paper. "When will Europe wake up?" it asks. The only thing that can be heard in the Union is quiet ridicule. Old clichés about Italy have been reactivated, the country is being laughed at. But it is high time to take Berlusconi seriously, the paper warns. The absurd merger of Berlusconi’s interests as an entrepreneur and prime minister contradicts everything that is sacred to Europe.

Russian daily Kommersant writes: "Everyone in Italy knows that every civil servant is corrupt and that this is the main guarantee for Italian democracy." The people are convinced that there are no politicians with a clean record. And until now no one has been able to become a dictator because he would have been sent to jail before, the paper states. Italy’s new immunity law, however, contradicts all traditions giving the prime minister a power to which he is not entitled. And it concludes: "The political balance has been destroyed."

France‘s Le Monde notes the providential timing of a bill which spares Berlusconi the humiliation of being a defendant in a court case during his presidency of the European Union. But the immunity accorded by the bill is limited to the tenure of office, the paper points out. "Mr Berlusconi‘s mandate ends in 2006, and unless he is re-elected he will then be as liable for prosecution as anybody else."

Looking at the situation in Iraq, London's The Guardian carries an editorial titled "The right to resist". The paper assesses that the U.S. and British occupation has gone "spectacularly wrong": "Iraq is sinking deeper into chaos and insecurity as US forces lash out at the Iraqi resistance which is now killing an average of one American a day", the paper states. It says that it was the crudest self delusion on the part of the invading states to imagine that because most Iraqis wanted an end to the Saddam regime they would accept the imposition of a foreign power to replace it. " The paper concludes: "The sooner political pressure builds to end it and negotiate an orderly withdrawal, the better for all of us."