When Germany's stem-cell law was passed, it was seen as an admirable compromise. In 2002, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government, with the strong support of his coalition partner the Greens, pushed through a law which made it illegal for German researchers to harvest stem cells from embryos within Germany -- but allowed the use of cultures developed before Jan. 1, 2002. Importing post-2002 stem-cell cultures was also banned.

Now, three years later, Schroeder is no longer happy with the law. On Tuesday, while receiving an honorary degree at the University of Goettingen, Schroeder made a plea for the ruling, one of the more restrictive in Europe, to be loosened. He said that it was important for Germany not to lose ground to researchers in other countries. Scientists have said that the older stem-cell lines they have been forced to use are no longer adequate for their research into cancer, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease. German commentators, not surprisingly, pounce on the issue on Wednesday.

Oddly, however, it was only the center-left Sueddeutsche Zeitung that really took the chancellor's speech seriously. The paper takes Schroeder to task for trying to make the topic of stem-cell research into a campaign issue -- and says that Schroeder is on one level correct that such laws dealing with moral issues do need to be reviewed from time to time. But "the science is still in its infancy and finds itself confronted by serious difficulties. When and if real successes can ever be achieved is hard to predict." Plus, the chancellor gives the impression that he is more interested in promoting Germany as a center of innovation than he is in looking at the moral questions involved. The bottom line, writes the paper, is that the "German constitution puts human dignity and human life above all other laws. The stem cell law approved by parliament is a successful compromise between protecting life and the freedom of research. There is no reason to change it at the moment."

The rest of the German dailies saw Schroeder's speech in light of the elections approaching this autumn. The conservative daily Die Welt notes that the 2002 compromise had little to do with political parties and much more to do with the individual leanings of parliamentarians. Still, there is one clear party conflict on the issue -- that between the conservative Christian Democrats (who tend to be against stem-cell research) and its likely coalition partner following the autumn elections, the neo-liberal Free Democrats (which is pro). "It is surely tempting to try to drive a wedge between the two parties," it writes. Furthermore, such a position allows Schroeder's Social Democrats to present itself as the motor of innovation and scientific advance. "The center-left is growing out of its fear of science. Whereas the committed SPD members identified themselves for a long time through their opposition to unregulated scientific advance, now innovation is seen as the antidote to their political difficulties."

The Financial Times Deutschland goes even further in its analysis saying that Schroeder is not necessarily interested in positioning his party for the election campaign, but rather that he now feels freer to give voice to his own views. "After all, the question whether to liberalize the strict rules for stem-cell research will surely not be a theme in the coming months. There is no law under discussion nor being planned. As such, the chancellor can demand a liberalization as loud as he likes, (his coalition partner the) Greens (who are against stem-cell research) can protest against him, and there is no risk of a breakdown of the coalition." In any case, the paper writes, it isn't the chancellor's office that will make the ultimate decision but the parliament.

Finally, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung feels that Schroeder may be -- considering his party's rather miniscule chances of winning the elections this autumn -- trying to polish up his legacy as an innovation-oriented chancellor. Be that as it may, the chancellor's Tuesday comments -- namely that laws such as that on stem-cell research need to be periodically reviewed -- "reveal a fundamental misunderstanding...." In basic questions such as the death penalty or the protection of embryos we must not allow ourselves ... to keep re-deciding things, otherwise the fundamental value means nothing. Even the latest successes of Korean scientists are no proof that we only need to kill enough embryos to one day be able to cure Alzheimer's or paralysis."

German papers on Wednesday also take a look at the meaning of the European Union's current crisis -- following the rejection of the European constitution by both France and Holland -- for relations between the United States and Europe.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung points out that the United States has proven itself as both the midwife and the gravedigger of Europe. The US was the midwife in that it was America's invasion of Iraq that served to bring large chunks of Europe together and gave the continent an identity as a true alternative to the US's bull-in-a-china-shop foreign policy ways. But two years later, fear of "American style" economic liberalism torpedoed the EU constitution. "The arguments used by the French left and globalization opponents -- who criticized the constitution's socio-political clauses for being too neo-liberal and too 'American' or 'Anglo-Saxon' come from the same arsenal that were used for two years to try to bring the (European Union) together. 'Not with America and not like America!' were the calls from the elites who were celebrating the founding of the European nation." In other words, anti-Americanism has recently defined Europe's vision of itself -- even as the United States has reacted with concern to the recent constitution debacle. The German philosopher Hannah Arendt, the paper notes, warned against relying too much on anti-Americanism and too little on the creation of a truly European identity. The paper agrees. "It is now time to bid farewell to such European visions."