Campaigns » EHF and the European Union

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 (see note 1) is as follows:-

Moreover, “Article 17″ meetings with the churches were started several years before even the Treaty was ratified.

The EHF 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 12 of the Treaty on the European Union 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.

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

For some time we asserted a 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 (Buddhism was represented at an earlier gathering).  If discrimination between religious and non-religious lifestances is debarred under the European Convention on Human Rights, why (we argued) 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 (May 2009) ethics and economics.  The result was that the Commission created a separate dialogue for non-confessional organisations – in which it has included numerous representatives of Freemasonry.

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 – for the previous text (taken from a Google cached copy as at 30 January 2008) see note 2. 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 the 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.

Note 1 – The Article in previous Treaty drafts was variously Article 37, 51 or 52 and briefly 15B and 16C. It is not Article 17 of the Lisbon Treaty but an article inserted by the Lisbon Treaty in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. [Back]

Note 2 – The following is the text of the BEPA webpage that was taken down following EHF complaint, as retrieved on 30 Jan 2008 21:53:12 GMT [from Google cache]:

Dialogue with religions, churches and communities of convictionSince the 1980s successive Presidents of the European Commission have felt it desirable to maintain a dialogue about European integration between Churches, Religions and Communities of conviction on the one hand and the European Commission on the other. The Bureau of European Policy Advisers is entrusted with this task. The benefits lie in better knowledge of the significance of European integration on the part of the religions and other communities of faith and conviction and in the light that they for their part are able to shed on contemporary political trends. A growing number of religious organisations have already appointed permanent representatives in Brussels for this work.

The European identity is composed of a large variety of languages, cultures, traditions and religions. “United in diversity” is the motto of the European Union (Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, Art. I-8), a proof that commonly shared values are the basis of our Union. Religious values play a very important role for the European citizens and consequently the European Union enjoys a spiritual dimension. The role of religions in building up a united Europe has been acknowledged in the Commission’s White Book on European Governance where is it stated that ‘Civil Society plays an important role in giving voice to the concerns of citizens and delivering services that meet people’s needs. Churches and religious communities have a particular contribution to make. (COM2001/428 final, page 14) Art. I-47 and I-52 of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe take up this theme.

Art. I-47 ‘participatory democracy deals inter alia with the confessional, religious NGOs and members of civil society. Art. I-52 refers explicitly to the religions and churches as transcendental institutions with their specific religious component. For the first time in the history of the European integration process, religions and churches have been firmly acknowledged as partners of the European Union, specifically taking into account their transcendental character. Both articles are equally pertinent to the communities of conviction.

Due to the important role of our partners, the European Union has underlined in the Constitutional Treaty and in other documents the intention to maintain an open, transparent and regular dialogue with them. This dialogue has already been a long standing tradition for the European Commission, which will be codified by the Constitutional Treaty.

‘Open’ simply means that everyone interested in participating in and contributing to European integration policy is welcome to do so. No one is excluded. Declaration 11 annexed to the Treaty of Amsterdam and Art. I-52 (1) of the Constitutional Treaty assert that the European Union has no competence to define the church state relationship, neither on a national nor on a European level. The European Commission therefore accepts as dialogue partners all organisations recognised as churches, religious communities or communities of conviction by Member States of the Union.

‘Transparent’ means that everyone must have the chance to know at any time about the  partners [LINK] aims and outcomes of the dialogue. The purpose of this site is to increase the transparency of the dialogue and to inform people about regular events and the latest developments.

‘Regular’ must be understood as permanent dialogue. On July 12, 2005 Commission President Barroso met with leading representatives of the three monotheistic religions and they enshrined the principle of a continuous dialogue. This informal consultative meeting will be convened twice a year with the Commission President in order to discuss commonly shared topics or subjects of major concern to either party.

[There followed lists of previous encounters between the Commission President and religious representatives.] [Back]