Democracy Control in the European Union

The European Union is a family of democratic states governed on the basis of the principle of rule of law and democracy. This notion has not always been laid down by the treaties since the 1951 Treaty of Paris but was naturally understood as a basic value during the post-war history of European integration. In the 1960s and 1970s the common value of democracy was demonstrated by the facts that countries under authoritarian rule could not join the EC and the association agreement of Greece was suspended at the moment of the military coup in 1967. The 1990s brought about the inclusion of the principles of democracy in the treaties and the first decades of the new century produced several examples where full members of the European Union seem to have breached those principles. The Member States concerned are in East Central Europe (Hungary, Poland and Romania) while Austria and France have also presented a case. The Treaty of Lisbon gives a broad definition of democracy and establishes a rather general procedure in the famous (or infamous?) Article 7 potentially resulting in the suspension of certain rights of the member state in question deriving from the application of the treaties. Since these consequences are very severe, article 7 is widely nicknamed as the „nuclear weapon” of the EU towards a member state allegedly in the process of non-democratization. Apart from the harshness of the punishment, several other questions arise. How can we tell that a member state reached a stage when democratic values are seriously breached? Who should state this and on what basis? Isn’t that already a serious takeaway of national sovereignty? Is there a definition of democracy that can serve as a basis of comparison? The paper examines the development of democracy control mechanisms towards Member States in the European Union and looks at he latest procedural developments. The theoretical framework for this examination is the concept of Europeanisation; we argue that Europeanisation is apart from the classic understanding (top-down-bottom-up) a value-driven concept that is suitable for the analysis of democracy control.