Fact check: No, the EU is not eroding European democracy

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Fact check: No, the EU is not eroding European democracy  European countries, including EU member states, tend to dominate democracy indexes, even as democracy faces threats worldwide.  READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/08/06/fact-check-no-the-eu-is-not-eroding-european-democracy  Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages

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00:00No, the EU is not eroding European democracy.

00:07Tesla CEO Elon Musk has once again made dubious claims about the EU,

00:12its popularity and the quality of its democracy.

00:15In a post on X, the multi-billionaire said that Ireland and all other EU members should

00:20leave the bloc, claiming that it's destroying democracy in Europe.

00:24He made the comments in response to another post criticizing a recent ruling by the European

00:29Court of Justice, which rejected a claim by the Irish government that it was unable to

00:34properly cover asylum seekers' basic needs due to an inundation of applicants.

00:38Claims about the EU's supposed lack of democracy are often levied when the ECJ

00:43hands down a ruling that a particular political faction or figure doesn't like,

00:47but research shows that EU countries, and European nations in general,

00:51are some of the most democratic in the world.

00:54The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index, published this year,

00:57says that there are 25 countries in the world that are full democracies,

01:0213 of which are in the EU.

01:04Some of the highest ranking include Sweden, Finland, Denmark and, yes, Ireland.

01:08The number is even higher when you take into account non-EU European countries,

01:13such as Norway, which is right at the top, Iceland, Switzerland and the UK.

01:18Many other EU countries are labelled floor democracies by the EIU,

01:22but this is still the second highest rank in the index.

01:25France, Malta, Slovenia and Latvia are some of the member states making up the numbers here.

01:30The EIU notes, however, that democracy in some EU nations has deteriorated,

01:35such as Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, the last of which is ranked as a hybrid regime.

01:40While there's still a clear democratic divide between Eastern and Western EU countries,

01:45the gap is closing slowly.

01:48The Czech Republic and Estonia made it into the full democracies list this year,

01:52after a decade of no Eastern European country making the cut.

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