Reusing GPL code without applying GPL legal in Europe?

["Sebastian Wangnick" <sebastian.home.nospam01@wangnick.de>]

Dear folks,

in http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=377109, Mr. Schilling claims the following:

	In Europe, we have the "Recht auf das wissenschaftliche Kleinzitat"
	that allows us to cite other works without asking in case that the
	quoted text (or images) is not too big compared to the own "intellectual
	creation level".

	As USA/Europe have a mutual acceptance of the US-Copyright vs. Urheberrecht, 
	this is even legal if the cited author is US citizen.

	So the "Recht auf das wissenschaftliche Kleinzitat" allows a European author
	to "quote" small portions of e.g. GPL code without asking the author for
	permissions. The European "Urheberrecht" on the other side forbids a minor
	contributor to govern the license for the project that makes use of the
	"Recht auf das wissenschaftliche Kleinzitat".

I'm not sure whether his conclusion is complete. According to http://www.sakowski.de/skripte/urheber2.html, citing is not allowed to replace (only to illustrate or backup) own statements of the author. I would therefore presume that whilst "quoting" GPL code, e.g., in a comment, to illustrate ones own approach might be OK, using GPL code as a mandatory element in the software would not be OK. But I am not a lawyer ...

Regards,
Sebastian Wangnick