Abstract Danny Nicol argues in this journal that my effort to devise a realistic normative conception of the European Union is unconvincing. I respond to his objections by correcting a number of misunderstandings of my original argument. I also use a more principled standard for providing evidence that the EU is indeed structurally unfit for democracy and emphasize the argument that the supranational layer of the EU is in need of a normative standard that is independent from the idea of democracy. The last section explicates the strength of normative realism.