The Values of the EU

From coal and steel to values

In the last lecture we saw how the European project was born from the ruins of the Second World War. The Schuman Declaration of 1950 spoke about very concrete things: if the production of coal and steel is pooled, war becomes “not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible”. At the beginning, a united Europe was above all a community of interests.

Today the Union describes itself differently. Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) states what the Union “is founded on”, and Article 49 requires every new state to respect the same values.

For the Republic of Moldova, which has been negotiating accession since 2024 and in 2026 opened its first cluster of chapters, the “Fundamentals” (the rule of law, the judiciary, the fight against corruption), Article 2 is not an abstract text. It is the criterion by which Moldova will be assessed.

This lecture opens Module II, “European values”. The next four lectures each take one value from Article 2 and discuss it at length.

Three meanings of the word “value”

In everyday language “value” means several things. We say that a house is worth 50,000 euros (economic sense), that a student is valuable (sense of merit) or that freedom is a value (moral and political sense). In this lecture we are interested only in the third sense.

Value (moral and political sense): something we consider worth pursuing, protecting or respecting for its own sake, and which guides our choices. Example: someone who values honesty does not cheat in an exam, even when nobody is watching.

Values answer the question “What matters?”. They do not describe the world as it is, but the way we think it ought to be.

Hume: “ought” does not follow from “is”

The Scottish philosopher David Hume noticed a common mistake in his Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740). Many authors, he says (paraphrased), start from propositions about what is and arrive, imperceptibly, at propositions about what ought to be, without explaining how the step was made.

The “is” / “ought” distinction: propositions about facts cannot on their own prove propositions about what is good or obligatory. Example: from “most students cheat” it does not follow that “cheating is fine”.

The distinction tells us something important about EU values: they are not facts. The fact that there is corruption in many European states does not mean that integrity is not a European value. Conversely, the fact that a treaty proclaims human dignity does not mean that it is respected everywhere.

There is always a gap between value and reality. It is precisely this gap that makes criticism possible: we can judge reality because we have a yardstick to compare it with.

Four words that are often confused

In public debate, “value”, “norm”, “principle” and “interest” are often used as synonyms. But they answer different questions.

A value says what matters: freedom, dignity, equality. It is general and does not tell us directly what to do in a concrete situation.

Norm: a rule of conduct that obliges, forbids or permits something, usually under the threat of a sanction. Example: the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova prohibits censorship (Art. 32). Norms make values concrete.

A principle is a general rule that guides how norms are applied, for instance proportionality: a restriction of a freedom must be no greater than necessary. An interest, finally, is whatever brings an advantage to a person, a group or a state: access to the single market, EU funds, the right to work in Italy.

Norms are applied, principles are weighed

The legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin pointed out a useful difference between rules and principles in Taking Rights Seriously (1977).

Rules apply in an “all-or-nothing” fashion: if the speed limit is 50 km/h, you have either exceeded it or not. Principles, by contrast, have weight. When two principles collide, for example press freedom and the right to privacy, the judge does not cancel one of them but weighs them in the concrete case.

A historical detail shows that the choice of words is not merely academic. Until the Treaty of Lisbon (in force since 2009), the treaty spoke of “principles”. Lisbon called them “values” and extended the list.

The change of a single word signals a change of self-understanding: the Union no longer presents itself only as a set of operating rules, but as a community of values.

Two sentences, two functions

Here is the full text of the article, in the official English version:

“The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.”Treaty on European Union, Art. 2

The first sentence lists six founding values. The verb is “is founded on”: the values are presented as the foundation of the Union, not as a distant goal. The second sentence says that these values are common to the member states and describes the society in which they live. Pluralism, tolerance or solidarity are not called “values” here, but features of that society.

Notice the order: human dignity comes first. This is no accident. After the experience of totalitarianism (Lecture 5), dignity became the value from which the others follow. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights also begins, in Article 1, with the sentence: “Human dignity is inviolable.”

We will discuss dignity at length in Lecture 7, democracy and the rule of law in Lecture 8, and tolerance and pluralism in Lecture 9.

A statement of fact or a requirement?

The sentence “These values are common to the Member States” has the form of a statement: it seems to describe a fact. But, following Hume’s distinction, we can ask: is it a description or a requirement?

If it is a description, it can be false: in a member state the press may be controlled by the government and judges may be appointed on political grounds. If it is a requirement, it means: “the member states must share these values”.

Normative and descriptive: a descriptive proposition says how things are, a normative one says how they ought to be. Example: “In Moldova people vote from the age of 18” is descriptive; “The voting age should be lowered to 16” is normative.

Lawyers usually read the sentence in the second sense. In 2022, in its judgments concerning Hungary and Poland (Cases C-156/21 and C-157/21), the Court of Justice of the European Union said that the values of Article 2 are not mere political guidelines: they define the very identity of the Union as a common legal order and give rise to legal obligations for the member states.

Article 2 does not stand alone

The values become operational through other articles of the treaty. Article 49 is the entrance: “Any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union.”

The Copenhagen criteria (1993): the concrete conditions for accession. A candidate state must have stable institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and the protection of minorities, a functioning market economy and the ability to take on the obligations of membership.

Article 7 is the protection mechanism: it says what happens when a state that is already a member breaches the values. We will analyse it in Part 5.

There is also a third, less well-known link. Article 4(2) obliges the Union to respect the “national identities” of the member states, “inherent in their fundamental structures, political and constitutional”. So the same treaty contains two ideas that must be balanced: common values and different national identities.

27 states, many ways of life

The Union has 27 states with different languages, religions, histories and legal traditions. Some are monarchies, others republics. Some have a state church; in others the strict separation of state and religion is a constitutional principle.

Hard moral questions receive very different answers. Abortion is regulated very restrictively in Malta and is available on request in Sweden. Same-sex marriage is legal in some member states and constitutionally excluded in others.

How can values be “common” amid such diversity? Philosophy gives us two opposite answers: relativism and universalism. We take them in turn and then look for a middle way.

Relativism: “custom is lord of all”

The idea that values depend on culture is very old. Herodotus tells how the Persian king Darius asked some Greeks at what price they would agree to eat their dead fathers. The Greeks, who burned their dead, replied that nothing in the world would make them do it. Then Darius asked the Callatiae, a people of India who ate their dead parents, at what price they would agree to burn them. They cried out in horror and begged him not to speak of such a thing.

“Such is men’s custom; and I think Pindar was right when he said that custom is lord of all.”Herodotus, Histories, III, 38

Cultural relativism: the view that values are products of a culture and cannot be judged from outside it. Example: “What is good for them is not good for us, and nobody has the right to judge.”

Relativism has a real merit: it teaches us modesty and warns us against the superiority with which one culture imposes its customs on others in the name of “civilisation”, as happened in the colonial era.

Three problems for relativism

The reformer problem. If the good is whatever my culture accepts, then anyone who criticised their own culture was wrong by definition: those who opposed slavery, those who demanded the vote for women, the dissidents under communist regimes. The conclusion seems absurd.

The self-refutation problem. The statement “all values are relative” itself presents itself as true for everyone. And from the fact that people disagree it does not follow that there is no better answer: once again, “ought” does not follow from “is”.

The boundary problem. What is “a culture”? In the Republic of Moldova live people who speak Romanian, Russian, Gagauz, Ukrainian and Bulgarian, of different faiths and generations. Who speaks in the name of “our culture”?

Often, whoever invokes “tradition” is in fact speaking on behalf of those who hold power. Ask: whose tradition?

Universalism: values for all human beings

Universalism: the view that some values hold for all human beings, whatever their culture, because they rest on something we all share: reason, the capacity to suffer, dignity. Example: torture is wrong even where the law permits it.

We met this idea in Kant (Lectures 3 and 4): a human being must always be treated as an end, never merely as a means, because he or she is a rational and autonomous being. Its best-known political expression is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in 1948:

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Art. 1

The Declaration was not a “purely Western” document: its drafters included, alongside Eleanor Roosevelt and the French jurist René Cassin, the Chinese philosopher Peng Chun Chang and the Lebanese diplomat Charles Malik.

Universalism, too, faces a strong criticism: it risks presenting the values of one culture, the European one, as the values of all humanity. When Europe speaks of “universal” values, is it not simply doing what the empires of the past did?

Walzer: a “thin” and a “thick” morality

The American philosopher Michael Walzer proposed a useful distinction in Thick and Thin (1994). There is a “thin”, minimal morality that almost all cultures recognise: the prohibition of murder, torture, tyranny and gross deception. And there is a “thick” morality, rich in detail, that differs from culture to culture: how we marry, how we relate to religion, how we organise the family and the state.

Applied to the EU, the distinction explains well how Article 2 works. Its values are worded “thinly”: dignity, freedom, democracy, the rule of law. The treaty does not say what form of government you must have, which religion to support or how to regulate the family. These “thick” matters belong largely to the national identity protected by Article 4(2).

Disputes arise precisely at the border between the two levels. Is the independence of judges a shared “thin” value or a matter of national organisation? Does the protection of LGBT people belong to “non-discrimination” or to the tradition of each state?

The three positions, side by side

Each position has a strong argument and a risk. Universalism lets us criticise injustice anywhere, but it can turn into imposition. Relativism teaches us respect, but leaves us speechless in the face of injustice.

Walzer’s middle way does not settle every dispute, but it shows where the disputes take place: at the border between “thin” and “thick”.

When you hear “this is not part of our tradition”, ask: is this a “thick” detail, which may legitimately differ, or the “thin” core that we have all accepted?

Writing a value down is not respecting it

The Soviet Constitution of 1936 guaranteed, in Article 125, freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly and of demonstration. It was adopted just before the Great Terror (1937–1938), in which hundreds of thousands of people were executed.

The example shows something simple: a value written in a text is not, for that reason, a value respected. A value is truly ours only when we practise it, especially when it costs us something.

Proclaimed value and practised value: the first is asserted in speeches and documents, the second shows in decisions and deeds. Example: a university that writes “academic integrity” into its regulations but never punishes plagiarism proclaims the value without practising it.

The criterion of coherence: three checks

How do we tell, with the tools of critical thinking, a proclaimed value from a practised one? The main test is coherence.

The criterion of coherence: a system of values is coherent when its parts do not contradict each other and when words do not contradict deeds. Example: a government that talks about the rule of law but ignores court rulings is incoherent.

We can check three levels. Internal coherence: the proclaimed values do not contradict each other; if they come into tension, like freedom and security, there is a clear rule for weighing them. Coherence between word and deed: institutions do what they say. Coherence of application: the same rule applies to everyone, including the powerful and including “our own people”.

The last level is the hardest. It is easy to demand the rule of law for your opponents; the real test comes when your political friends are involved.

The “Copenhagen dilemma”: an incoherence of the Union itself

The third level of coherence has been discussed within the EU itself. In 2013 the European Commissioner for Justice, Viviane Reding, described the so-called “Copenhagen dilemma”.

Before accession, candidate states are checked very strictly on the rule of law. After accession, the instruments of control become much weaker. A state can “pass the exam” on entry and then backslide.

The Union has tried to correct this incoherence with new instruments: the annual Rule of Law Report (since 2020) and the budget conditionality mechanism (since 2021).

For Moldova the dilemma has two sides: today’s strict checks may seem unfair, but they exist precisely because control is harder after accession.

Criticising hypocrisy, or the “tu quoque” fallacy?

A common argument in Moldovan public debate goes like this: “The EU talks about the rule of law, but there is corruption and there are convicted politicians in EU states too. So European values are hypocrisy and should not be taken seriously.”

The argument mixes two things. Pointing out an incoherence between word and deed is legitimate criticism: it shows that an institution does not keep its promises. But the conclusion “so values do not matter” is a logical fallacy.

Tu quoque (Lat. “you too”): the fallacy of rejecting an idea because the person who defends it does not respect it. Example: a doctor who smokes does not make smoking healthy.

The practical rule: the incoherence of the person who proclaims a value is an argument against that person, not against the value. What is more, anyone who accuses others of hypocrisy already presupposes the value: we accuse someone precisely because we take seriously the value they betray.

Article 7: the “nuclear option”

We come to the question of the lecture. The treaties do not provide for expelling a member state. A state can leave voluntarily, under Article 50, as the United Kingdom did in 2020, but it cannot be thrown out. What can the Union do, then?

The most serious instrument is Article 7, often called the “nuclear option”. It has three stages. First, the Council of the EU can determine, by four fifths of the states, a clear risk of a serious breach of the values. Next, the European Council can determine, unanimously (without the state concerned), a serious and persistent breach. Only then can the Council suspend, by qualified majority, some of the state’s rights, including its voting rights. Its obligations remain.

The weak point is obvious: the unanimity required at the second stage. If two states in the same situation protect each other, the procedure is blocked.

Two cases: Poland and Hungary

The procedure has been triggered twice. Against Poland, by the European Commission, in December 2017, over reforms that subordinated the judiciary to political power. Against Hungary, by the European Parliament, in September 2018, over concerns about judicial independence, corruption, press freedom and minority rights.

In neither case did the procedure reach the second stage. Pressure came by other routes: through the Court of Justice and through money. And change came, in the end, through elections.

The Polish case was closed in 2024, after a change of government and a commitment to restore judicial independence. After the elections of April 2026 and the new government in Budapest, in autumn 2026 the EU institutions are discussing closing the procedure against Hungary.

Other instruments

Because Article 7 is hard to apply, the Union also uses other routes.

Action before the Court of Justice. The Commission can take a state that fails to fulfil its obligations to court, and the Court can impose fines.

The conditionality mechanism (Regulation 2020/2092): the rule by which EU funds can be suspended if breaches of the rule of law endanger the EU budget. Example: the funds suspended for Hungary in 2022.

Dialogue and the annual Rule of Law Report are “soft” instruments: they carry no sanctions but rely on transparency and the pressure of public opinion.

Three possible answers

Firmness: breaches of the values must be sanctioned quickly and severely, otherwise the values become mere decoration. The problem: sanctions can be seen as a “diktat from Brussels”, can punish citizens for their government’s actions and can strengthen Eurosceptic discourse.

Patience and dialogue: democracies correct themselves from within, through elections, the press and the courts. The problem: if a government controls the judiciary and the press, elections are no longer fully fair, and correction from within may become impossible.

Separation: a state that does not share the values should not remain in the Union. The problem: the treaties do not allow expulsion, and defining a community of values by exclusion recalls the criticism we made of Husserl in Lecture 1.

Imagine that, 15 years from now, Moldova is a member state and a future government appoints Supreme Court judges on the basis of political loyalty. What should the Union do? Put your answer as an argument: a thesis, a premise, a counter-argument and your reply to it.