Are sanctions actually justifiable?

Abstract: There has been an upswing of liberal governments within the European Union over the past few decades and a way of handling these developments have been sanctions. Countries such as Poland, Hungary and Austria all have in various ways seen the consequences of these sanctions. This thesis examines whether the use of sanctions towards member states in the EU should be seen as justifiable if a state violates the fundamental values of Article 2 TEU. With the use of a normative given-that analysis, alongside a meta-analysis the thesis compares and discusses previous research and material in order to come to a conclusion. According to the strictly logical reasoning of the Article 7 TEU the simple answer is yes. Sanctions are justifiable. However, with the implications of normative European integration theory the answer is more intricate. Nevertheless the ideologies of cosmopolitanism, statism and demoicracy leads to the same conclusion. Sanctions should be seen as justifiable.