Threatening Dissensus as a Challenge to EU Legitimacy: Insights from the Belarusian Opposition

The article introduces and conceptualises the concept of threatening dissensus. Building on Coman and Brack’s (2023; 2025) framework, it defines threatening dissensus as division within the European Union (EU) that external, norm-committed actors interpret as undermining the Union’s normative coherence, procedural reliability, and foreign policy credibility. Using interviews with representatives of the Belarusian democratic opposition linked to Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the article examines how these actors perceive and evaluate divisions within the EU. It shows that the opposition does not view dissensus primarily through a liberal–illiberal ideological divide, but instead reads it as a product of diverging geopolitical orientations and foreign policy preferences, particularly regarding the engagement with Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s regime, support for Ukraine, and approaches towards Russia. Although such fragmentation is initially experienced as a threat to consistent EU support, the involvement of some conservative or illiberal actors, who nevertheless advocate for the EU’s principled policies regarding Belarus, complicates this assessment. Threatening dissensus, thus, captures how internal EU divisions are interpreted externally as a potential erosion of fairness, predictability, and integrity in EU decision-making. It functions as a perceived risk and a potential resource, highlighting the dynamic ways in which external actors interpret, adapt to, and sometimes normalise the EU’s internal disagreements. The concept differs from existing notions of incoherence, external credibility, and reputational costs in three key respects: (i) it centres the perceptions and narratives of external norm-committed actors; (ii) it refers specifically to internal political contestation within EU institution and member states; and (iii) it is experienced as a direct challenge to the EU’s principled stance on a particular external issue. Since it concerns perceptions of procedural stability and fairness, threatening dissensus also relates directly to the EU’s legitimacy in the context of enlargement, neighbourhood policy, and democratic support.