EU Council of Ministers
The EU Council of Ministers or European Council is the gathering of the heads of government of all EU member states (and also refers to similar meetings of ministers concerned with any particular topic – finance, trade, etc). It is the political sovereign body of the EU, alongside the Commission (the civil service) and the Parliament. (It is not to be confused with the Council of Europe, which is not an EU body at all.) The Presidency of the European Council is held in turn by each of the 27 member states. In addition, under the Lisbon Treaty a permanent president of the Council has been appointed – the first to hold thi office is Herman Van Rompuy.
The EHF had a two-hour meeting with the Polish Presidency of the European Council of Ministers in Warsaw on September 13. A press release was issued after the meeting. A full report of the meeting (not yet cleared by the Polish side) is attached.
May 2011
The EHF had a significant and positive meeting on May 24 2011 with the Hungarian Presidency of the EU’s Council of Ministers. David Pollock and Pierre Galand, respectively EHF’s president and senior vice-president, were received in the splendour of Budapest’s magnificent neo-Gothic Parliament building by half a dozen ministers and officials of Hungary’s government, led by their Secretary of State for Religious, Civil and Ethical Matters.
The hour that was set aside for the meeting stretched to over an hour and a half as the Hungarians took seriously the points we raised and dealt with them in detail. Though we did not accept all the assurances we were offered as adequate answers to our points, we were pleased by many of the things they said and we shall now be watching developments to be sure that their words are matched by actions.
We talked by way of introduction about the decline of religion in Europe and the growing number of people living explicitly non-religious lives, and then dealt with specific points of concern: the Presidency’s initiative on family policy and demographics; Hungary’s new constitution and in particular its protection of embryonic and foetal life and its implications of discrimination based on sexual orientation; the new media law in Hungary; and EU efforts to tackle discrimination.
A full report of the meeting is attached: this has been agreed by the Hungarians without any significant alteration to our original text.
January 2011
On 11 January 2011 the EHF met the Belgian President of the Council. This was the first time the EHF had been accorded a meeting with the Council presidency, although meetings with the two bodies of European bishops (COMECE and CEC) have been standard for some years. For a report of the meeting, see here.
May 2010
In May 2010 we took part in a conference on Religious Freedom in Democratic Societies organised by the Spanish presidency with the UN Alliance of Civilisations.
March 2010
In March 2010, the EHF wrote to the current (Spanish), next (Belgian) and following (Hungarian) presidencies about the need for even-handed implementation of the Lisbon Treaty dialogue. We pointed out that “the habit has arisen of each successive Council Presidency holding an exclusive meeting with representatives of the two conferences of bishops of the Christian churches” and said:
We believe that the message given by these exclusive meetings is that the Christian churches hold a privileged place in the European Union. . . We ask that you invite the EHF also to meet representatives of the Spanish Presidency, so that we may put to you our deeply held views on some of the priorities for the EU. We believe that this would show that the Presidency recognised that the Lisbon Treaty, now at length ratified, requires even-handed treatment of the bodies representing religious and the non-religious people of the Union and that the Council values the contribution to the EU and to society at large of its large non-religious population.
The full letter to the Spanish presidency can be read here; the other two letters were essentially similar.
October 2009
In October 2009 the EHF wrote to each of the EU’s 27 heads of government urging them to oppose the candidacy of Tony Blair as president on the grounds that he was not only committed to a religious view of life but prejudiced against non-religious views.
November and December 2008
In late 2008, the EHF wrote twice to President Sarkozy as Council President for the second half of 2008 protesting at special treatment for churches and for the three Abramic religions – once in November about the Presidency’s meeting with the bishops’ conferences and once in December about a Colloquium on EU fostering dialogue with Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
This content last updated 19 September 2011 @ 1:29 pm