An encouragement and a challenge

"People don't read newspapers any more." "They're not curious about what goes on around them." "Nobody's interested in Europe." Many such clichés get trotted out about the inhabitants of Europe, particularly the young.

But at the beginning of October, thousands of them chose to avoid the sunshine of a rare Indian summer to queue for a place in one of several more or less dark - and always too small - lecture halls. They had come to listen to journalists, writers, artists and other experts, on subjects that ranged from energy, the European Union and the Arab Spring to GDP, the financial crisis, Africa, Nicaragua, women, cartoons, journalism, alternative globalization and unemployment. In short, more or less everything that contributes to news and the media.

Some 63,000 of these people were attending the Internazionale festival in Ferrara, Italy, which is now in its fifth year. More than 6,000 more took part in the first Tribunes de la presse festival in Arcachon, organised by Courrier International. And roughly the same number turned out for the Dilema Veche festival in Alba Iulia, Romania. These were three events that took place, by coincidence, on the same weekend in three corners of Europe, and that were organised by two of Presseurop's co-founders and one of its partners.

The three events allowed the strengthening of ties between these titles and their readerships -- which, as Mircea Vasilescu, patron of the Alba Iulia festival, wrote, are coming to identify more and more as "a community". In all of them, too, Europe played a major part. Questions from the public at round-table sessions, press revues and other debates -- on subjects from the euro crisis and the media to immigration and satire -- revealed a real interest, and sometimes real worry. This sounds an encouraging note for the media, but at the same time it presents a challenge to politicians. Each of them has a duty to ensure that their responses live up to such high expectations.