In the wake of violent incidents committed by some of their own citizens, and of criticism that they had been too lax in integrating their own societies, some of France's European partners, especially the British and Dutch, had begun to see merit in France's more proactive integration tradition. But the past week of nightly clashes in the Paris suburbs of police with ethnic minority youths will have popped any illusion that France is any nearer the right model than they are.

The sad truth is that no European society seems yet to have a way of steering between an overzealous assimilation of ethnic minorities that could cause a backlash and alienation, and a lack of integration amounting to segregation. The latter condition has long existed in the string of joyless satellite towns that ring Paris where, with a heavy North African and black African concentration, the unemployment rate is more than 20 per cent, or twice the national average.