The popularity of the idea of the intercultural in different parts of the world means that there are many differing meanings and ways in which the notion is understood, represented, expressed and used. In contrast to this polysemy, democracy often appears on the surface to be understood through universalist and/or absolutist conceptualisations. Combining the intercultural and democracy thus requires problematization. In this article we use The Council of Europe's Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (2018a, 2018b, 2018c), a document that will have a nonnegligible influence on education in Europe and the rest of the world, as an example showing how the notion of the intercultural is constructed. In order to do so, we use a form of intertextuality to analyze the Framework, focusing on three key instances found in the document: identity, the political, and intercultural competence. Some of the ideologies within the Framework clearly point to Eurocentric discourses and a stigmatization of the Other. Also, the way in which the political is sanitized can engender a language of depoliticization and obedience. As a result, we propose critical interculturality as a way to move beyond culturalist self-centered notions of the intercultural, arguing that the political and the social cannot be separated from the intercultural when discussing democracy.