As European Commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou announced her return to Greece this week to head the PASOK list in the March 7th elections, party leader George Papandreou's "big tent" policy was creating some confusion in the socialist ranks.
It was not Ms Diamantopoulou, a popular figure with younger voters, who was causing the problem. It was political refugees from both right and left whom Mr Papandreou had welcomed on board to boost the chances of his party, currently three to six points behind the conservative New Democracy in the opinion polls.
Officials and followers of PASOK, the Greek daily Kathimerini said, "are in a state of political shock" at the admission to the party list of two prominent former New Democracy members, Stefanos Manos and Andreas Andrianopoulos, who as apostles of economic neo-liberalism "until now personified absolute evil".
Scarcely less shocking was the arrival of two former communists, Maria Damanaki and Mimis Androulakis, formerly strong critics of PASOK "sleaze" and in particular of former prime minister the late Andreas Papandreou, father of George.
The costs of such moves could well outweigh the gains, Kathimerini warned, but expediency was not the sole consideration.
"The venture is mandated by Papandreou's strategic belief in the need to transform PASOK and the political system in general."
On Tuesday the French national assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of banning the wearing of the Islamic headscarf in public schools, a decision based, it would seem, on a firm adherence to the French principle of secularism or laicité, which so baffles the Anglo-Saxon mind. Régis Debray, former icon of the revolutionary left and later adviser to President Mitterrand, defended the decision in an interview in Le Figaro.
"The [passing of the original\] law of separation of church and state in 1905 was no picnic either," he said. "But properly applied it became a calming factor in society. Everything which in the long run unites the citizens started off by dividing them.
"And then one has so many debates that in the end one forgets that the Republic emerged from a series of conflicts and not a series of discussions. One should thank the fundamentalists of every stripe for reminding us of that . . .
"Who has afforded a public representation to the faith of Islam if not the Republic?" Debray asked. "Who gives official recognition to Muslim chaplains? Every model of civilisation has its own notion of the sacred. We respect that of others; let them respect ours. With us it's the pact of citizenship. With others it's divine revelation. The first doesn't prevent the second from existing, but it can't let itself be swallowed up by it."
Commission president Romano Prodi returned to Rome on Saturday to launch the European Parliament campaign of the Italian centre-left at a convention attended by 7,000 delegates.
On Friday, La Stampa of Turin published an essay by Mr Prodi in which he outlined his European philosophy. On globalisation he wrote: "Given that it is perfectly useless to think of avoiding it, we Europeans have the duty, and the possibility, of governing it, placing it at the service of man, regarding the market as an instrument for affirming the fundamental rights of the human person rather than asking the human person to adapt and mould itself to a supposedly superior and objective 'logic of the market'." What is desirable, Prodi added, is "a union which, more than being political or economic, should be cultural. Not in the sense of levelling or homogenisation but one that makes concrete that unity in diversity which today signifies for Europe moving from the 'multicultural' to the 'intercultural'."
In the new British Tory leader's first major speech on EU policy, delivered to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin on Thursday and reported by the Guardian, Michael Howard argued for what he called a "live and let live" approach and what others might well call a two-speed Europe. "Those member-states which wish to integrate more closely would be free to do so.
"It would not be necessary for them to drag Britain and quite possibly some other member- states kicking and screaming in their wake."
On the home front, Mr Howard also amplified last week on his recent "I believe" political credo in a speech entitled "the British dream". The Daily Mail was not overly happy with his liberalisation of policy on gay couples but was ecstatic about his belief in the benefits of low taxation. "At last the Tories are rediscovering their commitment to the core beliefs of conservatism. That there is a moral case for lower taxation. That an all-powerful state is crushing its own citizens . . ."
Johann Hari in the London Independent disagreed: "We will only have European-quality public services if we have European levels of tax and spending . . . Mr Howard's speech was reheated Thatcho-Reaganism with a flash of Bush . . . The only rational response is: did anybody ever really buy this stuff?"