OK, joking aside, but how in the name of God can a teacher get up on his hind legs

[Burney]

Well, I guess in Eastern Europe things are going a bit too far. Poland, Hungary. First they initiated a bunch of measures to combat the influx of refugees, immigrants. No problem with that, I can see their point. But they push on further to try to dissolve elements of the government, such as independence of the courts, et cetera. It will always be a bit tricky with countries which were not democratic, had democracy imposed on them, and whose people now are having second thoughts about that imposition. Various decisions must be taken about whether these countries can simply pull down the whole democratic system that the EU had instituted. And whether, if they attempt to do so, they cannot be punished for such an attempt.

I thought -- and please tell me if I'm wrong -- that the EU was established to promote the freer flow of trade between the European member countries. Free trade and the material benefits of it is a liberal goal par excellence.

Eastern Europe is to the right of western Europe (both literally and metaphorically), but the EU's problem is that it really is in no position to lecture anyone about democracy since it is in no meaningful sense democratic itself. The idea that the EU has instituted any democratic system is - frankly - laughable. Equally, we have to ask by what authority it takes it upon itself to censure democratically elected national governments for the laws they - with a public mandate - choose to enact over their own countries?

And the Common Market was set up to facilitate internal trade, but that doesn't stop it being protectionist. First and foremost it was established to provide a protected market for German manufactured goods and French agricultural produce. Prices are kept artificially high by quotas, tariffs on imports and by paying farmers not to produce and forcing fishermen to throw dead fish back into the sea. It is not free trade in any meaningful sense.