Ms Clare Daly:

I am glad these topics were raised. We need to dig deeper on these issues. It is incredible some of the violations that are going on. We have not heard the half of them. The new annual rule of law report on paper sounds like a good idea, and it is in that it provides that every country be evaluated and that no country be singled out. The problem with that report is that it had no teeth. When it was produced the ruling party in Bulgaria went on television and rubbed the rule of law mechanism into the faces of its citizens, stating that the European Parliament was of the view that Bulgaria is improving. This utterly demoralised the citizens there because they thought that their protests and points had been ignored. We do need to be careful. It is a little bit like the time when the unions in South Africa argued for sanctions. It was they and the citizens who wanted it. Citizens in some of our European countries do want a financial sanction on their governments who do not uphold EU rule of law. We need to get to that space otherwise there will not be any changes. It is a veryàla carterule of law, as is the rapport that we have because it depends on the country one comes from. It is easy to criticise the eastern European countries but they rarely deal with police violence in France, Spain or with any of these issues. If we are serious, we need to deal with all of the issues.