The Legitimacy of Article 7 TEU: Militant Democracy and Democratic Self-Defence in the European Union

Is Article 7 Treaty on European Union (TEU) a legitimate instrument for defending democracy in Europe, or does it undermine the very democratic principles it purports to protect? This paper argues that Article 7 is normatively legitimate – and may be used to defend democracy in Europe – when assessed through a substantive theory of militant democracy, oriented toward safeguarding human dignity, fundamental rights, and the rule of law (the fundamental values expressed by Article 2 TEU). Engaging with some prominent critiques of Article 7 – such as Theuns’ claim (2024) that suspending a member state’s political rights violates democratic equal chance – this paper argues that such objections rely on an unduly thin, proceduralist conception of democracy that fails to capture both the nature of contemporary antidemocratic threats within the European Union as well as contemporary accounts of democratic legitimacy. Building on a normative account of militant democracy that treats democracy’s substantive commitments as constitutive, rather than merely instrumental, this paper reconceptualizes Article 7 as a proportionate and temporally limited sanction aimed at preserving the conditions of democratic self-government. It further situates Article 7 within the EU’s transnational constitutional order by engaging Kim Lane Scheppele’s account (2024, 2025) of the “rule of law writ large,” according to which transnational legal frameworks provide both constraint and reconstruction in periods of democratic regression. By preserving membership while sanctioning antidemocratic governments, Article 7 secures legal and institutional pathways for democratic recovery that alternatives do not. This paper concludes that the greater danger to European democracy today lies not in overreach but in hesitation – and that Article 7 represents a necessary form of transnational militant democracy.