Michael, you continually frame everything the EU does as some kind of evil other entity imposed and imposing its dibolical will. It isn’t. The EU is an agreement by treaty between the member states, an agreement in which there are mechanisms for resolving disputes and an agreement that member states knew what they were signing before they signed up to it. In any trade agreement or treaty there are always mechanisms that are outwith national courts to deal with disputes. It can’t be any other way, in principle.
I am quite happy that there are robust food and hygiene standards across the EU and that said standards are enforced by some EU institution, equally, across all member states. If every member state could interpret the rules and regulations as it suited them then it wouldn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
For sure, it’s not perfect, no trade agreement is, but it is and has been beneficial for many countries and many individuals seeking redress particularly workers’ rights. The current Polish ruling party is seeking to gain the support of anti-abortion and anti-gay sentiment. They do not want to abide by the anti-discrimination tenets of EU law, to which they signed up. They have politicised the judiciary so that they can get their legislation past the constitutional courts. That is interfering with one of the three fundamental arms of government and is diminishing the inherent checks and balances on the executive arm. It’s a power grab by the current ruling party. Do you think that is reasonable? Would you be happy if a UK government tried the same?
The EU is correct to see the dangers in this and rightly pointed it out to Poland’s current government. I guarantee you that the Catholic Church is lurking somewhere in the background much as it did in Ireland until very recently.