Amir Alecperov argues that militant democracy – the principle that a democracy may lawfully limit certain democratic rights to protect the democratic constitutional order – is not only compatible with EU law but urgently necessary. Romania’s post-1989 legal framework offers a tested model. Moldova is applying it in real time
My grandmother was born in Chernivtsi when it was still part of the Kingdom of Romania. History moved the borders; she ended up in the Soviet Union. I ended up, decades later, with Romanian citizenship – and with a quiet understanding that states can disappear, borders can be redrawn, and cultures can be swallowed whole if democracies are too passive to defend themselves.
This is not an abstract concern. It is the lesson of the 20th century, written in the history of Eastern Europe.
Liberal democracy rests on a tension it cannot fully resolve. It guarantees freedom of expression, association and political participation – including for those who would use those freedoms to dismantle democracy. Interwar Europe showed where that passivity leads. The response, developed in postwar constitutional theory, is the concept of militant or defensive democracy – streitbare Demokratie in the German tradition – the idea that a democratic state may defend its constitutional order against those who seek to destroy it from within.
The question is always: where is the line? When does democratic self-defence become authoritarian overreach?
Romania’s post-1989 legal framework offers one of the most carefully constructed answers in post-communist Europe – and the European Court of Human Rights has confirmed it holds.
Romania's Law No.14/2003 on Political Parties prohibits registration of parties whose activities undermine constitutional democracy, political pluralism or the rule of law. Complementary criminal legislation bans the promotion of totalitarian regimes and public display of fascist, Nazi, or communist symbols when intended to glorify such regimes.
Freedom of association is not absolute. Where a party’s programme or conduct poses a genuine threat to democratic order, restriction is permissible – provided it is legally grounded
Crucially, these are not executive decisions. They require judicial review. Romania’s courts have applied them cautiously, targeting genuinely anti-democratic formations rather than mainstream political opponents. In 2021, the European Court of Human Rights confirmed this approach in the Committee for the Organisation and Registration of the Romanian Communist Party v. Romania. It found that a government’s refusal to register a party that would not dissociate itself from the communist regime was compatible with Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The key finding: freedom of association is not absolute. Where a party’s programme or conduct poses a genuine threat to democratic order, restriction is permissible – provided it is proportionate, legally grounded and subject to independent judicial oversight.
This is not censorship. It is constitutional hygiene.
Article 10 (2) of the European Convention makes the same point about speech: restrictions are permissible in a democratic society for national security, public safety or protection of others’ rights. Article 52 of the EU Charter applies the same logic to the rights it guarantees.
Nostalgia for Nicolae Ceaușescu – or for Soviet stability – does not in itself warrant legal restriction. Democratic pluralism must accommodate uncomfortable historical memory and socioeconomic critique. The line is crossed when expression becomes organised mobilisation against the constitutional order. Romania’s framework maintains that distinction. It targets conduct, not sentiment.
Romania offers the historical precedent. Moldova is living the argument in real time.
In June 2023, Moldova’s Constitutional Court declared the pro-Russian Shor Party unconstitutional and ordered its immediate dissolution – citing a constitutional provision requiring parties to uphold political pluralism, rule of law and Moldova's territorial integrity. The party had led months of Kremlin-backed protests aimed at destabilising President Maia Sandu's pro-Western government.
In July 2023, parliament followed up by banning Shor Party leaders from running in elections for five years. When successor parties emerged to circumvent the ban, the state moved again. In September 2025, Moldova’s electoral commission barred two further pro-Russian parties – Heart of Moldova and Moldova Mare – from parliamentary elections, citing illegal financing, undeclared foreign funds and links to the already-banned Shor network.
Moldova is a state partially occupied by Russia, with a Kremlin-backed separatist enclave on its eastern border and a documented history of Russian electoral interference
Critics called these measures authoritarian. The comparison does not survive scrutiny. Moldova is a state partially occupied by Russia, with a Kremlin-backed separatist enclave on its eastern border and a history of Russian electoral interference. Moldova’s Prime Minister declared the bans a response to the 'hybrid war' being waged against the country – a characterisation supported by EU and US sanctions against Ilan Shor himself for destabilisation activities.
This is not suppression of legitimate opposition. It is refusal to allow a foreign-funded operation to use democratic procedures to dismantle democratic institutions. The Romanian model – judicially grounded, constitutionally anchored, proportionate in application – provides exactly the framework Moldova is now deploying.
Some have questioned whether such measures sit comfortably with EU values. Article 2 of the Treaty on the European Union commits member states to democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights. But militant democracy is not an exception to these values – it is an expression of them. The EU increasingly recognises this. The Venice Commission affirmed that party bans are compatible with democratic standards when applied proportionately and through independent courts.
Militant democracy is not an exception to democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights – it is an expression of them
The alternative – treating all political formations as equally legitimate regardless of their relationship to democratic order – is not neutrality. It is a choice to remain passive while democracy is dismantled through its own procedures.
Romania spent decades building a legal architecture that says: democracy is not required to be indifferent to its own destruction. The European Court of Human Rights has confirmed that architecture is sound. Moldova, under pressure from a neighbour with whom it shares no border yet which has already occupied part of its territory, is now applying the same logic with urgency and precision.
Militant democracy is not a threat to the EU Charter. It is what the Charter was designed to protect. The question is not whether democratic states have the right to defend themselves. It is whether they have the courage to do so before it is too late.
