Recent developments in Poland and their impact on fundamental rights as laid down in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU

My vote on this motion carries the following reservations: I am not convinced that when the European Parliament is seeking to censure the actions of governments of our member states, we are following comparable methods of assessment and applying “principles” to situations in a transparent and fair manner. In most situations of national crisis and controversy, especially in polarised democracies, the partisan clash of political formations can be huge and intimately influenced by the subterranean strategies being followed by vested interests. Assessing rights and wrongs in such situations can be extremely difficult even for objective observers within the national context (should they exist). Doing so from within this Parliament is even more complex and liable to error. Our deliberations here are also subject — though we may try to believe otherwise — to political calculations and manipulations, extraneous to the national situation about which we try to reach a judgement. Frankly in the case of Poland, though ideologically I disagree with the approaches and beliefs of its present government, I doubt whether sufficient weight has been given to the anti-democratic distortions of the previous government which have led to what one could all the “over”reactions of the present one.