Europe worries about riots

2005-11-09 11:06

Paris - Watching from the sidelines as France wrestled with the problem of widespread urban riots, other European countries wondered on Tuesday if they could be next.

As the French government imposed a limited state of emergency, including curfews in affected areas, European editorialists and politicians warned that the spreading violence was not a problem only for France.

Spanish interior minister Jose Antonio Alonso said if France succeeds in bringing the riots under control. "It will be a success for all Europeans," he said.

He said what is happening in France "should be taken into account in the entire geopolitical space of the European Union".

Portuguese interior minister Antonio Luis Santos da Costa agreed at a joint press conference with Alonso that the riots "are not only a French problem. It is a problem common to other realities of integrating immigrants in other regions of Europe."

Careful consideration needed

The German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said in its Wednesday edition that France's experience required careful consideration in the rest of Europe.

"If the thesis that the French model of integration has failed is right, then everyone must ask where is there in comparable circumstances a model that has succeeded," it said.

Italian interior minister Giuseppe Pisanu said the real danger in his country came not from the suburbs as in France "but from terrorism organised crime, internal subversion, clandestine immigration and illegality".

However, opposition leader Romano Prodi said earlier that an explosion in Italian suburbs was inevitable.

"We have the worst suburbs in Europe," he said. "We should not think that we are all that different from Paris. It is only a matter of time."

An issue of great importance

Many Arab newspapers also feared that the "French fire" was threatening to spread across Europe, noting incidents in Belgium and Germany which also have large Arab and Muslim immigrant communities.

"We give great importance to this issue because it may spread across Europe and affect the (Arab and Muslim) region," said Ahmad Sheikh, editor-in-chief of Al-Jazeera satellite channel.

In Copenhagen, Peter Skaarup, a spokesperson for the Danish People's Party linked the French situation with recent vandalism in Denmark.

Last month, dozens of teenagers of mainly immigrant origin damaged cars, vandalised a shopping centre, destroyed a food stall and attempted to burn down a children's nursery during four nights of disturbances in the Rosenhoej neighbourhood of Aarhus, northwestern Denmark.

- AFP