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Comment by enriquto | Hacker News Reader

> I definitely hope we manage to build unified Europe

As a fellow European, I share your hopes! But I'm becoming more and more disheartened day by day, as I see its downfall into a simple club of unaccountable states. Somehow the EU thinks it's OK to bully its eastern members like your country, for allegedly being "undemocratic", while at the same time letting Spanish repression roam free. I have no sympathy for the Russian government, but the way that they responded to the cynical EU critique to Navalny's detention was particularly refreshing. I hope we manage to get rid of the authoritarian commission and the council, and most of the power is welded by the parliament.

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> for allegedly being "undemocratic",

Isn't the issue in Poland that the judiciary is becoming less independent from the government? Separation of powers between government, parliament & justice system seems to be major feature in a democracy. So if the judiciary is indeed becoming less independent, isn't that a sign of decreasing democracy in a country?

I'm not familiar with the "spanish repression" you refer so I won't comment on that, but Navalny's detention... wasn't he detained because of he violated rules in his probation period[1]... by not being present when he was in a coma... having being poisoned by nerve agent!? I think it was quite fair to criticize that.

1: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55694598

> I think it was quite fair to criticize that.

Of course it is! The actions of the Russian regime are horrible. I also agree with your views on the dangers of decreasing democracy by having a less independent judiciary.

Regarding Spain, I'm obviously an extremely biased party (against it) and I prefer to suggest you to research about it on your own, and not take my word for it. You may find that Spanish democracy is just as bad as Turkey or Russia. This is why I say that current EU foreign representative being from Spain and criticizing Russia is a very sad state of affairs (at least for a person like me that thinks that the EU is a fundamentally very good idea).

He's referring to Catalonia, Eastern Spain, which speaks a different language altogether. For those who don't know it, a significant number of European majors have a history of suppressing regional languages in modern history - Gaelic, Breton, Occitan, Irish and Basque are some casualties.

If the EU didn't "bully" Poland and Hungary for turning into dictatorships now, and later changed its stance on Catalonia, people would accuse it of hypocrisy the other way round.

Trying to avoid being hypocritical just means you cannot do anything good at all.

I think your comment is an interesting example for the complexity of our small continent, for our shared but complicated history and our massively different viewpoints on everything. I think that makes the EU an even more impressive experiment.

Thanks! I'm sure we will be able to work together towards a better world!

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