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Tempers were flaring at a recent summit of the European Union when Mark Rutte, prime minister of the Netherlands, looked straight at Viktor Orban, his Hungarian counterpart, and saidwhat everybody was thinking: If you dont share our values, you should take Hungary out of the EU.

Ruttes unsubtle nudge to make a member state exit the club was also a reminder about one of the EUs biggest design flaws. It has no mechanism to expel countries. This raises the question: When exactly should a bloc, club or organization be able to throw members out?

In the Hungarian case, Orbans latest affront was a law that curbs sex education in a way that crudely stigmatizes homosexuality, in effect equating it with pedophilia. But Orban has been scorning the EUs values for years. With many small cuts, hes whittled away at the rule of law, minority rights and press and academic freedoms.

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Another member state, Poland, is almost as bad as Hungary in disdaining everything from gay rights to judicial independence. With their illiberal cynicism, these two governments threaten to hollow out the EUs identity as a club of democratic, tolerant and open societies.

And yet the tools available to discipline errant members are weak. The main one is a process stipulated in Article 7 of the EUs treaties, which Brussels has initiated against both Poland and Hungary. It allows the bloc to strip a country of its voting rights if all the other states identify a serious and persistent breach to EUvalues. That unanimity requirement, however, means that Hungary and Poland can have each others back and neednt worry.

Another mechanism to tie funding to observance of the rule of law was added last year, but it is vague, messy and slow. The reality is that the EU, which subjects countries to onerous standards while theyre applying for membership, can do almost nothing to sanction them once theyre in, and certainly cant kick anybody out.

A similar dilemma often keeps the brass at NATO awake. In the alliances early years, the U.S. and other allies feared that some members, such as Italy, might become communist and serve asTrojan horses for the Soviets. More recently, the bogey has been Turkey, which has scorned democratic norms, menaced allies such as Greece and even bought an air-defense system from Russia that could enable that adversary to sabotage NATO equipment. But NATO also cant kick members out.

In this sense, the EU and NATO differ from most other types of association in this world. The United Nations, for example, is also a club of nation states but does have a way of expelling members. So does the Council of Europe, a human-rights organization with 47 member states, including all 27 EU countries.

The ability to expel is also the default in organizations whose members are individuals. The Catholic church can and does excommunicate people for apostasy or other alleged sins. The U.S. Congress, like most parliaments, can kick out members (and has done so 20 times), as can political parties, country clubs, schools and most other institutions.

This implicit prerogative to expel members is philosophically baked into the liberal tradition as a natural extension of the right of the people peaceably to assemble. In ancient Athens, the worlds first experiment in democracy, citizens regularly gathered to write the names of individuals on shards of pottery called ostraka. Anybody who received enough votes was ostracized in the original sense that is, exiled.

As usual in life, however, it gets complicated. Everybody can agree that, for example, a Jewish organization should be able to throw out a member who shows up with a swastika and shouts Heil Hitler. But what about an organization that trains young leaders and wants to keep out women? Or a labor union that wants to terminate members for their political activities? Or the Boy Scouts if they want to expel a member just because hes gay?

The latter three were actual cases before U.S. courts that illustrate the philosophical and ethical conflicts involved. In the first, judges ruled that the organization cannot exclude women; in the second, that the labor union cannot kick out members; but in the third, that the Boy Scouts thanks to the First Amendment did have the right to expel a member for being gay.

Im not about to re-litigate these cases. Im simply acknowledging that freedom cuts both ways. Sometimes it requires protecting groups from individuals. Most of the time, though, it means protecting individuals from groups, and from being arbitrarily and unfairly excluded. That even applies to countries.

The power to expel is therefore nothing to trifle with. It should be used only in extreme circumstances and with an overwhelming consensus among members that its necessary. Even then, expulsion should always be reversible, so that the member in question has the chance and the incentive to make amends.

The EU needs to get this balance right. This means tweaking its treaties to make sure that expulsion is rare but possible. While that effort gets underway, Orban will have plenty of time to ponder how much further up his populist tree he wants to climb. And Hungarians who still have votes, after all can decide if theyd rather swap out leaders and stay in a club they like.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:Andreas Kluth at akluth1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net

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The European Union Should Be Able to Kick Out Hungary - Bloomberg