Eurotopics.net

In Turkey the trial against 486 people who allegedly took part in a failed coup orchestrated by preacher Fethullah Gülen in the summer of 2016 is under way. The prosecution wants life imprisonment for many of the accused - and crowds outside the court are calling for the death sentence. The expectations of the press regarding the trial vary considerably.

France's Interior Minister Gérard Collomb announced in an interview with the Sunday paper Le Journal du Dimanche that the French authorities want to differentiate more clearly in the future between asylum seekers and economic migrants, and to ensure that the latter are sent home more effectively. France's journalists are up in arms.

The controversial pig farm on the grounds of a former concentration camp for Roma in the Czech Republic is being shut down. The agricultural company agreed to an offer from the government to buy the land and tear down the facility in the village of Lety in South Bohemia. Commentators are relieved to see a battle that lasted 20 years end this way.

In the eyes of one Google developer, women are less suited to working in the tech industry than men for biological reasons. Google took action and fired the man who published his opinion in a ten-page internal "manifesto". The case has also triggered debate among Europe's journalists.

At the beginning of August 2007 the US real estate bubble burst, bringing banks across the world to their knees. A year later the financial crisis came to a head when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. Commentators doubt the world has learned the right lessons from this experience.

The new sanctions are intended to persuade North Korea to end its nuclear programme. They received an unanimous vote of approval in the UN Security Council last weekend. For many commentators, however, sanctions alone are not enough.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday announced plans to set up hotspots in Libya as early as this summer, before retracting the statement just a few hours later. The security situation in the country precludes such a move, the Elysée announced, adding that feasibility studies would be carried out for Libya's border region with Niger and Chad. Europe's commentators weigh up the pros and cons of Macron's initiative.