Although democracy and the rule of law belong to the basic criteria for accession to the European Union, democratic norms have recently been eroding in several member states. In reaction, many politicians and scholars demand more effective instruments to sanction the violation of democratic standards. However, others argue that such measures could lead to unintended backlash effects, when governments in the affected countries convince their domestic audiences that EU actions are an illegitimate intervention into domestic affairs. In this paper, therefore, we shed light on whether and under what conditions domestic audiences would support EU sanctions against their own country for failing to comply with norms of democracy and the rule of law. First, we argue that citizens should become less likely to support EU sanctions if their government defends itself, especially so if it seeks to shift the blame to the EU (blame effect). Second, this effect may be moderated by which actor identifies and claims the norm violation (source effect). The more citizens perceive the actor who makes the allegations as independent and legitimate, the more likely they are to accept sanctions against their own country and the less influential the blame effect should become. We test our expectations by conducting a survey experiment in the six EU member states Denmark, France, Germany, Spain, Hungary, and Poland (n=12,000). Our preliminary results corroborate our theoretical expectations. The findings imply that the EU should work towards a sanctioning mechanism that anticipates the blaming strategies of affected member state governments.