[marklgr]

The muscle part is mostly historical, up to the '80s maybe. Now it's more about money eg. to fund campaigns. Cf. Berlusconi, Sarkozy.

Scandinavia is the poster child for ethics, and from what I know I would say rightly so, but it's not representative of Western Europe as a whole.

[peteretep]

I think I was incorrectly using Western Europe to mean Western Europe minus Southern Europe. I don't believe this happens in France, Germany, Holland, the U.K., etc

Your inclusion of Sarkozy surprises me. Googling for Sarkozy and mafia is bringing me a bunch of antisemitic sites and a site called info-resistance — do you have any reliable sources?

[marklgr]

Sarkozy is prosecuted for several charges regarding the funding of his electoral campaigns (who cost far more than what the law allows), and it is now extremely likely that Gaddafi is illegally involved. Prior to that, Chirac had strong ties with Charles Pasqua, whom he appointed Interior Minister -- Pasqua was clearly linked to the Corsican mafia and he later funded the infamous SAC -- muscle from the mafia to counter the OAS. As for Mitterand, he made it possible for Berlusconi to invest in France via Mediaset and "La Cinq", among others.

So there's a long history of shady ties at the very top of the French institution, pretty often in the form of what was deemed as a "necessary evil", but corruption nonetheless. That's pretty much summarizes the spirit of the French Fifth Republic, anyway: "we go to do what we got to do, and the public wouldn't understand".