Opposing Special Rights for Churches in the EU

Europe has a history of medieval domination by the Roman Catholic church in alliance with autocratic kings and emperors, of bitter wars of religion and nationalism, and of hard-fought struggle for personal liberty and freedom of thought and belief. Modern Europe enjoys the fruits of these struggles - the power of governments and churches is limited, personal freedom is largely guaranteed.

But dangerous ideologies, religious and political, still appeal to some people by their simplicity; and in many countries one church - usually the Roman Catholic Church - still has formal and informal power without any democratic accountability. Elsewhere the churches often crave for their lost power.

In a Europe where a large proportion of the total population has explicitly or implicitly rejected religion and where growing minorities follow non-Christian religions, it is wrong to revert to political arrangements that give a special position to the churches or to religion at large - or indeed even to religious and non-religious lifestances, however inclusive that might seem: politics and religion should be kept apart. Yet in most countries one or more churches is ‘established’ or has a privileged financial and/or institutional position; and as power moved from states to the EU, the churches were plainly determined to ensure that they obtained a similar position of influence in the European Union.

Appallingly, this is what the European Union has now done. It has agreed a Treaty that under which the European Commission (a) gives its blessing to concordats and other agreements which bestow huge privileges on the churches and (b) gives privileged consultation arrangements to the churches - and to what it calls ‘philosophical and non-confessional organisations’ - of which the principal example appears to be the European Humanist Federation.

The wording of Article 17* is as follows:-

Article 17

1. The Union respects and does not prejudice the status under national law of churches and religious associations or communities in the Member States.

2. The Union equally respects the status under national law of philosophical and non-confessional organisations.

3. Recognising their identity and their specific contribution, the Union shall maintain an open, transparent and regular dialogue with these churches and organisations.

Moreover, although the Treaty has yet to be fully ratified, Article 17 has already been implemented for several years.

The EHF has vigorously opposed these arrangements from the start - read an account here. We believe that the churches should take their place in the mainstream consultations with non-governmental organisations that are separately provided for (Article 8B of the Maastricht Treaty as amended by the 2007 Lisbon Treaty reads in part: ‘The institutions shall maintain an open, transparent and regular dialogue with representative associations and civil society’).

We believe that the right to consultation should be based either on recognised special expertise or on democratic representation. We believe that these separate arrangements for the churches result from the historical tendency to unthinking deference they have always enjoyed, often to the disadvantage of the democratic wishes of the majority, and offer them considerable influence and advantage.

Now that the EU has regrettably agreed these separate consultation arrangements for churches and , the EHF has had to decide whether to take up the possibility of consultation offered to it as a ‘philosophical and non-confessional organisation’. We have decided that it is right to do so, while making our principled objections clear: the alternative is to leave the churches an unopposed channel of influence at the highest level in the EU.

What is more, we claim the right to attend the annual meetings now held between the three EU Presidents - of the Council, the Commission and the Parliament - and representatives of not just a range of Christian churches but also of other religions - in May 2008, these included thirteen Christian dignitaries, four Muslims and four rabbis. These religions - and Buddhism was represented at an earlier gathering - all also have separate meetings with the President of the Commission. If discrimination between religious and non-religious lifestances is debarred under the European Convention on Human Rights, why should we be excluded from these annual high-level meetings? After all, they do not discuss religious topics but key policy issues such as (in May 2008) intercultural dialogue and climate change and (planned for May 2009) ethics and economics.

_____________________

The Commission’s website, in the section on BEPA (the Bureau of European Policy Advisors to the Commission president) gives details of the "Dialogue with religions, churches and communities of conviction". This page was extensively revised in 2008 following a complaint by the EHF about the pro-religious bias of some of its content. The website lists events and - until summer 2008 - listed the 74 or more organisations - virtually all religious except the EHF - that are in dialogue with the EU. However, in summer 2008 the list of dialogue partners was removed and the EU Commission has resisted all pressure - from MEPs such as Veronique de Keyser and from teh EHF among others - to reinstate it. There is therefore now a 'transparent' dialogue with religious organisations whose names are not known except from the attendance at particular events.