How Should the EU Respond to Democratic Backsliding?

How should the European Union respond to democratic backsliding in its member states? Against the background of the developments in Hungary and Poland, the risk of democratic backsliding on the domestic level is cast as the real threat to democracy in the EU. However, recent contributions to this discussion often focus on the feasibility and effectiveness of reactions of the EU. This overlooks the more fundamental normative question of whether the EU should in fact address these domestic issues and if so through which means. This article addresses this question on the basis of multilateral democracy (or demoicracy) as an ideal theory for the EU. Multilateral democracy is a voluntary association between several democratic peoples. Peoples in multilateral democracy are defined by a democratic structure including rule of law while certain variations in their internal organisation have to be respected. However, if a member of the multilateral union falls below threshold of this democratic structure its people is no longer a democratic agent whose representatives require equal respect. Allowing the representatives of this state to participation in the legislation of the union means subjecting the other peoples and their citizens to domination by non-democratically accountable representatives. Yet, since the citizens of the backsliding state are also recognised as equal members in multilateral democracy their legal protection and participation rights should be sustained. Therefore, multilateral democracy prefers the suspension of voting rights of state representatives to expulsion from the union. In order to make this case the paper discusses first, the objection to the suspension of voting rights as undemocratic, and second, whether expulsion needs to be the ultimate sanction available to multilateral democracy.