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The EU, as a result of its very presence, has had a disruptive impact on the traditional workings of national democracy. The main problem, however, is not so much that the EU alters national governance practices as that national leaders have developed neither new ideas and discourse to legitimate the changes in practice nor new practices to reinvigorate national democracy. The article makes this case by answering three questions: 1) What is the EU? 2) How has the EU strengthened democracy at the supranational level? 3) Why and how has the EU weakened its member-states’ national democracies? It concludes with a fourth question: can we solve the problem of the weakening of national democracy by further strengthening EU democracy?Vivien A. Schmidt, professeur Jean Monnet d’intégration européenne à l’Université de Boston et titulaire de la chaire Franqui (Université libre et Université catholique de Bruxelles), est professeur invité à l’Institut d’études politiques de Paris. Elle est l’auteur de Democracy in Europe: the EU and National Politics (New-York, Oxford University Press, 2006).