The paper clip, 30 November

The Swiss voted at the weekend, by a majority of 7.5 percentage points, to ban the building of minarets on mosques. The result of the referendum secures headlines across Europe. Le Monde reports that the main Muslim organisation in Indonesia, the grand mufti of Egypt and the leaders of the largest mosque in Lyon are among those that have denounced the result of yesterday's referendum. The paper has an interview with Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, Swiss justice minister, who said she fears the result could hurt the Swiss economy. Le Figaro reports that a debate on whether to ban minarets could break out in France. Xavier Bertrand, the secretary-general of the ruling UMP party, said yesterday that “it is not certain that one really needs minarets” to practice Islam. There are ten minarets in France.

The Financial Times carries an opinion piece that argues that, “to minimise the inevitable horse-trading, the European Council could appoint a small nomination committee made up of experts with no personal ambition for the job” to select the European Council's president.

La Libre Belgique reports it may be harder than he imagined for Herman Van Rompuy, the newly appointed president of the European Council, to escape the minutiae of Belgian politics. The paper reports that francophone politicians are calling on Van Rompuy to give his opinion in a long-running dispute over whether three local authorities on the edge of Brussels should be subject to Flemish electoral law. The dispute has prevented three local (francophone) mayors from taking their seats. One of the mayors said that “we want to know his position given that the European Commission, for example, has often condemned Flemish deviations [from the rules] in the Brussels periphery”.

In an interview with the Sunday Times of Malta, Joe Borg, the outgoing European commissioner for fisheries and maritime affairs, criticises Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi's handling of the commissioner nomination. Borg said he only learnt of the decision to replace him with John Dalli after his wife watched the evening news on television last Monday. Borg did, however, congratulate Dalli on his appointment. In a separate piece, Dalli says he has the skills to carry out his new job, as commissioner for health and consumer affairs, and denies that he was “kicked upstairs” by Gonzi.

Greece's financial difficulties are the subject of an opinion piece in the Financial Times, which argues that Greece can expect no gifts from Europe. “The EU's authorities, rightly or wrongly, are more afraid of the moral hazard of a bail-out than the possible spillover effect of a hypothetical Greek default,” it writes. Greece's Kathimerini writes (in English) that the European Commission is putting pressure on Greece to take bold measures to reduce its gaping budget deficit and that Prime Minister George Papandreou has said that his administration, which came to power in October, is not to blame for the “tragic” state of the country's finances.

In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has hit out at those who suggest that he has had links with the Mafia. In a statement emailed to media this weekend, he claimed that “I have done more to fight the Mafia than anyone else”. Among the English-language papers with reports are the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London and the Independent.

Slovakia's Týžden and Sme write that the Cuban authorities have arrested one of the children of Juan Almeida Bosque, one of the original commanders of the Cuban revolution. Bosque died on 11 September this year.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has told Pakistan to “take out” Osama bin Laden, the Times of London reports. As the UK and US seek support for their decision to send tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan, Brown told the Pakistani leadership that it had not done enough to catch the men responsible for the 11 September 2001 attacks.

On the eve of a big announcement from US President Barack Obama on strategy in Afghanistan, senior British army officers have warned that rising defeatism at home is demoralising troops on the frontline, the Independent reports. The country is in danger of “talking ourselves into a defeat back home” at a moment when the war is in a critical stage, one lieutenant-general said.

Le Figaro has an interview with Bernard Kouchner, France's foreign minister, on Iran, Afghanistan and the Middle East peace process. Kouchner criticises the Iranian government's announcement yesterday that it will create ten new sites for uranium enrichment. He said that Catherine Ashton, the EU's newly appointed high representative for foreign and security policy, would be “the spokesperson of all the 27 [member states]”. “We [the EU] are going to have a common policy not only on Iran but also on Afghanistan,” he said.

The EU stands accused of undermining global climate talks in today's Guardian. The EU's negotiating team has removed text that climate aid should be “additional to” and “separate from” overseas development aid. The Guardian also has a piece by one of the highest-profile US writers on environmental issues, Elizabeth Kolbert, who writes on the view from America on the UN climate-change conference in Copenhagen.

Le Figaro reports that France's ruling UMP party has made an election-campaign promise not to increase local taxation in the French regions for at least six years. It said the promise would apply to any regions whose governments are under UMP control after local elections in March.

Le Monde reports that the trial of the suspected Nazi war-criminal John Demanjuk begins today in Munich. Demanjuk is accused of working at the Sobibor death camp during the Second World War and of participating in the mass murder of Jews. Demanjuk, who has been acquitted of separate war crimes charges in Israel, was extradited to Germany from the US so that he could stand trial.

Lidové noviny looks at the new composition of the Czech government, following Štefan Füle's nomination to be the Czech Republic's European commissioner and Ladislav Miko's return from the environment ministry to the European Commission's environmental authorities.

Gazeta Wyborcza looks at Prime Minister Donald Tusk's plans to change the Polish constitution – and finds them wanting.

Pravda considers the map of power in Slovakia after recent local elections and concludes that Prime Minister Robert Fico and his Smer party now have a substantially greater hold on the reins of power.

Slovakia's Pravda writes that the president of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, has discussed Slovakia's controversial language law with the president of Hungary, László Sólyom.

The Guardian reports that up to 10,000 people in the UK die needlessly of cancer every year because their condition is diagnosed too late. The figures come from research carried out by the government's director of cancer services.