Daniel Hannan (ECR). – Madam President, what bothers me about this motion is not just the intrusiveness and the presumption about telling a sovereign country how to organise its internal affairs, it is the asymmetry that we see over and over again in this Chamber. Whenever a government is criticised for some domestic policy, you can bet that it is a government that is unpopular in this Chamber because it is patriotic, or because it stands up for its national interests, or because it refuses to endorse the goal of the United States of Europe.

This is a classic example: there were judicial reforms made by the previous Polish Government that resulted effectively in the packing of the bench, with not a peep of protest from this Chamber. But when the current Government undoes those reforms to try and restore a measure of balance to the judiciary, the sky falls in. All of you who voted for this measure know in your hearts that, if this had been a goody—two—shoes federalist government, this motion would never have come before the House.