A hypocritical EU seeks to impose its values on the rest of the world

A hypocritical EU seeks to impose its values on the rest of the world, says daniel hannan

Poland is taking over from Britain as the least-liked nation in Brussels. This time, the conservative Kaczynski government - President Lech (right) and Prime Minister Jaroslaw - is in trouble for blocking a "European Day against the Death Penalty", arguing that such a day should be a general celebration of life, and should cover the rights of the unborn.

Good for the Poles! I'm not a supporter of capital punishment, but what the hell does it have to do with Brussels? The EU was meant to focus on cross-border issues; but it is hard to see how even the most tendentious Eurocrat can argue that domestic penal codes are an area of international interest.

Nor does it stop at Europe. Under the new Charter of Fundamental Rights, member states are forbidden to extradite suspects to jurisdictions where they might face the death penalty, including the US. Remember this the



The Kaczynski government is in trouble for blocking a ‘European Day against the Death Penalty’
next time someone tries to tell you that the Charter doesn't impose obligations on the member nations, and concerns itself solely with the actions of EU institutions.

Euro-enthusiasts are unthinkingly displaying the cultural imperialism they decry in others. Most of those demanding a global ban on executions are the same people who raged at America for seeking to "impose its values" on Iraq.

By the same token, the EU tends to make its development aid conditional on recipient states respecting the reproductive rights of women. Nicaragua, for example, was recently threatened with being cut off when it toughened its abortion law. Yet when the US channels aid to organisations that favour sexual abstinence, it is condemned as colonialist.

You can't have it both ways, my Europhile friends. Either it's right for rich countries to hector and bully poor ones into mimicking their values, or it's not. It can't be right when Brussels does it, but wrong when Washington does