Ejection for Democracy? How Should the EU Respond Towards Non-Liberal-Democratic Member States?

Political developments in Hungary, Romania and Poland have led to the question how the EU should react towards populist member state governments that violate the liberal democratic values of the EU. Governments use domestic democratic victories to undermine fair democratic procedures and the rule of law. From the perspective of liberal democratic theory, this paper will discuss what the most appropriate responses to this problem are, placing its main focus on the proposal to eject member states that violate EU values. It will discuss both the nature of the sanctions and the procedures for effectuating them. As regards the sanctions, article 7 TEU authorize the Council to suspend the voting rights (and other rights) of individual member states. Other proposed sanctions range from stating public criticism based on systematic annual reviews of all member states over initiating treaty infringement procedures, to applying economic sanctions. More drastic measures would be to give the EU the power to dissolve and replace governments in member states or to throw member states out of the EU. As regards the procedures, a basic question is whether sanctions should be effectuated by political procedures or juridical procedures. The discussion of procedures is important given both their relative epistemic qualities and concerns about impartiality, not least with regard to the principle that ‘no-one should be judge in one’s own cause’. The desiderata for the nature and content of sanctions are that they are in line with liberal-democratic principles and, accordingly, that the extent to which they harm ‘innocent bystanders’ is as limited as possible. This rules out ejecting member states in the defense of liberal democracy since it undermines the ability of European citizens as co-rulers to make democratic decisions together in the future and it harms the democratic opposition in the member state in question.