Talking about European Democracy

This editorial comment asserts that, instead of merely conceiving of the challenges to the foundational values common to the Union and member states in terms of the Rule of Law, it is necessary to address democracy as the political founding quality of Union and member states. In doing so, we must understand democracy as essentially open to other contestation and debate, to civil society. To avoid despotism it should never yield to the temptations identifying the represented with the representatives, and divide powers over institutions and other public social actors. It criticizes the weak response of the Commission and other EU institutions to the dismantling of democracy in Hungary and more recently in Poland, and takes the self-defeating reference to the procedure for monitoring and sanctions under Article 7 TEU as "the nuclear option" as symbolic for the unwillingness to take the democratic foundations of the EU seriously.