EU Foreign Policy Chief Lectures America on ‘Human Rights’
Nile Gardiner /
A couple of weeks back I wrote a post revealing that the EU has been giving millions of euros to anti-death penalty groups in the United States. As The Wall Street Journal subsequently commented in an editorial on my Telegraph piece:
European countries may need bailing out, but you’ll be pleased to know that the European Union has enough money to promote human rights and democracy—in America. Don’t laugh.
American states are free to decide their own penal codes, which vary widely and change as facts and public values evolve. Europe won’t allow such a debate at home but feels the moral afflatus to tax its own citizens to promote one side of the argument in America. Europe can’t find the money to pay for its fair share of NATO but it can spare a dime to hector its main defense benefactor on criminal law. This is why fewer and fewer Americans take Europe seriously.