The conference, organised by our Dutch hosts, will follow our annual General Assembly which will start at 9 am on Friday 25 May, preliminary details of which are given below.

The conference theme is outlined by our hosts as follows: 

HUMANISM AND RESILIENCE

Today we are all exposed to media hype, political populism and a great variety of other such pervasive influences. Not only that, but economic instability is creating a general sense of insecurity in Europe. The result is widespread disenchantment with politics. All this poses a serious threat to to vital human values, such as freedom, responsibility, solidarity, and even human dignity. To avoid being swept away by such trends people need resilience.

Why resilience? The Dutch founding father of contemporary humanism, Jaap van Praag, had a vision of a humanism that could deliver the building blocks for a resilient lifestance. He saw it as his mission to shape humanism so that it could empower people and make them resilient against unthinking conformity and against nihilism.

To be resilient means to be able to think for yourself and to resist peer pressure.

Resilience comes not from cutting yourself off from such influences but from having the capacity and the freedom to respond to them – while recognizing that in fact you are always influenced by others and the culture you live in.

During the conference, helped by a series of expert speakers, we will explore the importance of resilience from different angles in interactive sessions. You will interact, participate and be inspired. The programme will appeal to members of the EHF and its member organisations, to all humanist professionals, such as counsellors and teachers, and to people whose interest in humanism is more general.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY

The General Assembly will be held on Friday 25 May in the usual two sessions, but this year the formal meeting will be in the morning and the informal Open Meeting in the afternoon.

9 am – 12.30 pm General Assembly

This is technically only for representatives of EHF member organisations and for individual EHF members, but in fact any member of an EHF member organisation is welcome.  It will receive the annual report and accounts, approve the budget and working plans, elect new board members and conduct other business.

Lunch break

2 pm – 5 pm Open meeting

This informal meeting is for all members of EHF and its member organisations.  There will be more detailed reports on some of the EHF’s work and short reports from member organisations on what they have been doing.  If your organisation would like to offer a report, please email us at admin@humanistfederation.eu.

Member organisations will be sent details of the meetings and all the papers through the ehffhemo Yahoo e-forum.  Please check that your representation on ehffhemo is up to date and that your representatives pass on all the details.

In Sweden people who have their gender reassigned from male to female or vice-versa are forced by law to be permanently sterilised.  The EHF has sent a protest to the Prime Minister of Sweden, Fredrik Reinfeldt, who – apparently for political reasons – is refusing to amend the law.

Our message was as follows:

The European Humanist Federation unites over 50 organisations in over 20 countries, with contacts in many more.  Our purpose is to represent the views of people who have no religion (maybe one-third of all Europeans) but hold non-religious beliefs such as Humanism, and to promote secularism, i.e., separation of politics from religion and belief, on a basis of equality and human rights.  We are recognised by the European Union for dialogue under Article 17 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

We are shocked to learn that Sweden has a law requiring that people having their gender re-assigned are compelled to be sterilised.  We are even more shocked that your Government is defending this law and refusing to go along with the majority of Parliament that is in favour of repeal. 

We urge you, as the elected leader of a country that rightfully takes pride in its human rights record, to change your stance and repeal the law without delay.

Some claims to conscientious objection do have serious implications for the rights of others – rights that some religious believers have shown a willingness to ignore, as was seen at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in October 2010. The EHF had already drawn attention to this problem – in a speech at our side-meeting at the OSCE human rights conference in 2009, for example.

The new policy sets out broad guidelines for considering the dilemmas that can arise when claims to conscientious objection clash with other people’s rights, for example, to equality or non-discrimination.

The EHF has responded to an EU consultation on policy on illegal drugs with a strong call for a radical review of what it calls the “gross failure” of present policies.  It says that criminalisation-based policies:

• are ineffective and costly to the whole of society
• have increased collateral damage and insecurity for drug users
• have tended to exaggerate the dangers linked to drug consumption
• are not coherent with political attitudes towards other addictive substances.

The submission says:

The counterproductive nature of current policies is now widely recognised. Politicians and senior police officers not infrequently speak openly of the damage being done by current practices. The Global Commission on Drug Policy, with a most eminent membership from the worlds of politics and finance as well as human rights, produced a devastating report last June which opened uncompromisingly: “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world”. Some states – such as the Netherlands and Portugal – have experimented with liberal regimes, eliminating much of the collateral damage that arises from criminalisation of drugs without incurring serious damage to the lives and health of drug users or other people.

The EHF outlines steps that ought to be considered while stopping short of positively advocating them since we are not experts.  But we say that it is “seriously disappointing that in its strategy paper Towards a Stronger European Response to Drugs the EU shows no glimmer of fresh thinking, only a determination to press ahead with reinforcement of the failed policies of the past.”

 Read the full submission here.

In their work under the Helsinki process, they frequently have to make depositions or give evidence in court.  Despite constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion or belief, Greek law requires that as a default they have to take an oath according to the Greek Orthodox faith or else to justify their wish to take a different oath or to affirm by revealing their adherence to another belief or their lack of belief.

The Strasbourg Court has again in this case underlined that freedom of religion or belief includes “the right of the individual not to be obliged to manifest his religion or his religious beliefs and not be obliged to act in such a way that such convictions or their lack can be deduced. In the eyes of the Court, state authorities have no right to intervene in the field of freedom of conscience of the individual and to seek his religious beliefs, or to force him to express his beliefs about the divinity” (judgement, para. 28). 

The Court therefore found against Greece and ordered the government to pay costs.

Source: Dimitras and others v Greece (No 2) 

Roman Catholics were 10% (1.1 million, down from 2.7 million ten years ago) and another 4% named another denomination or religion while 7% simply said they were religious without saying what they were. 

The results confirm the status of the Czech Republic as one of the world’s most atheistic countries.

Sources: Czech Statistical Office table “Podrobné údaje – Náboženská víra podle krajů” at http://www.scitani.cz/ and Czech radio website; further details of 2001 statistics are here and here.
 

Massimo Redaelli  writes: “With 6 billion Euro per year, Italy could accomplish miracles.” This is the slogan on the maxi-posters of the new campaign by UAAR that earlier today were posted around Genova, and that tomorrow will cover the streets of Venice, too. After the notoriety gained by the website “The Cost of the Church” (the first detailed list of the fiscal privileges and the economic contributions the Church enjoys), the association decided to insist on this message.  Because the cost of the Church is high, and “it is a price that both believers and non-believers pay”, as the poster itself emphasizes. Instead, religions should be financed only by their followers.

“Some of the budget cuts proposed by the Italian government were blocked by obstructionism from some castes”, Raffaele Carcano, secretary of UAAR, observes, “but here we are talking about an über-caste so untouchable that not even Prime Minister Monti has the courage to question its privileges.”

And it is not just a problem of ICI (the tax on buildings, which is not paid by Church-owned hotels, clinics, … as long as they contain a chapel), as one would suppose by reading the newspapers: “Shall we talk about the 1.5 billion Euros that are paid to teachers of religion, the billion Euros that go into the ‘Otto per mille’ [subvention from income tax], the 700 million Euros financing Catholic schools and universities?” asks the UAAR, with all the numbers ready at hand.

This is why, while the Parliament is discussing the budget law, atheists and agnostics are raising the stakes. “We are discriminated against, as taxpayers, and we want everybody to see that”, Carcano continues: “it is incredible that the Catholic Church, the largest Italian real estate owner, it not asked to make the sacrifices that the economic situation calls for”.

With six billion Euros Italy could not only reduce its public debt, but also invest in research and education, as UAAR suggests in its poster.

The campaign has been edited by Horace Kidman.

Unfortunately the President was unable to attend until the last minute or two (he had to preside at a plenary session of the Parliament which also drew away for much of the time the three MEPs who came to parts of the meeting). The result was that the chair was taken by Vice-President Tokés, nominated by Buzek to be responsible for the Article 17 dialogue. Now, László Tokés is an admirable man – he was the Presbyterian priest who led the revolt in Hungarian-speaking Romania against the Ceauçescu regime. Later he was elected a bishop, then an national MP, then a European MEP, and then a vice-president of the Parliament. But he is, it seems, both blind to the appearance of potential bias in a bishop presiding over the Article 17 dialogue and strongly inclined to see personal insults where none exists.

He introduced the meeting with largely anodyne remarks (but see below) but before he could introduce the first speaker he was interrupted by Sophie in’t Veld MEP who said she had some questions about the way the meeting was organised.

Tokés: Please wait until President Buzek arrives because he organised the meeting and I have no answers.

Sophie in't Veld

in’t Veld: President Buzek is detained presiding over the plenary session. I have been asking for answers to these questions for three weeks or more. I think the way the meeting has been organised is very questionable.

Tokés: I am in the chair and I ask you to wait.

in’t Veld:This is a democracy and it is right that questions about the organisation of a meeting should be asked before it starts. I insist on putting my questions on record. What were the criteria for deciding who should be invited? Why did some people get their invitations extremely late? How was the panel chosen and in what sense is it representative of the non-religious voices all across Europe? Why have my letters about Article 17 to President Buzek from the Platform for Secularism in Politics of 13 December 2010 and 12 July 2011 never been answered? And by the way, I object to your referring in your opening remarks to the Communist dictatorship of Romania and an “atheist dictatorship”.

Tokés: I know nothing about the organisation of this meeting and nothing of your letters.

in’t Veld: You were sent copies of them.

Tokés: No I had no copies. Do not be so aggressive!

in’t Veld: Why were my letters unanswered?

Tokés: Let us start the meeting.

in’t Veld: For the record, I see no validity in the meeting.

Sophie in’t Veld then left the meeting.  Afterwards she wrote to President Buzek: see her letter here and the attachment to it (an earlier, unanswered letter of 12 July) here.

Laszlo Tokes

Mr Tokés proceeded with the meeting. There were four invited speakers. Three were freemasons, the fourth David Pollock, President of the EHF. Two of the freemasons said that they had only been invited to speak in the past 24 hours!First to speak was Joseph Asselbergh, President of the Grand Orient of Belgium. He said that freemasonry was neither a religion nor a substitute for one nor a gathering of atheists – some freemasons were religious. They had an eclectic philosophy but saw the influence of religion on political power as a cause for concern. So they saw the Article 17 dialogue as questionable because it introduced dialogue of politicians with religion that did not exist in many EU states. The EU guarantee under Article 17(1) that it would not interfere in religious matters – so what was the dialogue about? It had to be about politics, economic and social issues.

He referred to the EU’s advisory board on bioethics which included many religious members. But religion – which was no more than opinions, albeit valuable ones – had no monopoly on ethics and was indeed often a disguise for ancient ethical systems. Religion interfered with women’s reproductive rights and saw religious freedom as the freedom for religion to interfere with the rights and freedoms of others. The dialogue should be only with those who would claim freedom for all, not just for themselves.

Denise Oberlin, the Grand Mistress of the Grand Feminine Lodge of France, spoke second, covering the virtues of secularism. She said that the non-religious majority in Europe was little heard. The European Parliament, as the only democratic body in the EU, had to pay attention to their views. She also expressed concern about the EU’s bioethics advisory board and talked of the inequality of women, closing with praise for the European Parliament Platform for Secularism in Politics.

David Pollock of the EHF then spoke. He said he shared the concerns expressed by Sophie in’t Veld and found it very odd that Mr Tokés, as vice-president in charge of the dialogue, was unable to answer them. He expressed concern about the origins and nature of the dialogue and examined in detail the nature it should have, criticising both the EU institutions for not publishing minutes of the meetings and the churches for the way they wished to insinuate themselves into every aspect of the EU’s affairs. He said that, as had been said at a recent EPPSP meeting at which Mr Tokés had been present, the fact that the person in charge of the dialogue was a bishop would inevitably be seen as a sign of inherent imbalance however carefully Mr Tokés conducted himself in that role. His full speech is here.

The last speaker was Rüdiger Templin, president of the United Grand Lodges of Germany. He stressed that he did not represent his organisation: freemasonry was about self-development in humanist values but its organisations took no stands on policy. He deplored the present state of society, mentioning the violence he saw as prevalent among young people and the corruption and greed for power of top managers in finance and industry.

Mr Tokés then said he would address his critics. He said that he had not refused the floor to Sophie in’t Veld, only asked her to wait for President Buzek. As vice-president he had no executive function concerning his mandate, and so he had no role in selecting the speakers or the people to be invited: that had been done by people in the office of the President. He apologised for the lateness of the invitations. He said he was surprised at the intolerance shown by David Pollock in criticising him for being a bishop. David Pollock interrupted to say that his criticism had not been of Mr Tokés personally but of his appointment. If Sophie in’t Veld had been placed in charge of the dialogue with the churches, they might well have had a similar objection. Mr Tokés demurred. He then denied knowing anything of the reported demands of the churches.

Michael Cashman MEP had joined the meeting and said that Mr Tokés by his attempts to explain himself had only created greater concern about his lack of objectivity in his role, in which he was meant to represent the whole Parliament. If one had a vested interest, one should decline a related portfolio, or at least be absolutely certain that you showed absolute impartiality and objectivity. He called for the dialogue to be conducted with the utmost transparency, with full publication of all documents, calling on all present to tell his office of any refusal to reveal relevant documents, and said that without such openness concerns would grow and the dialogue would fall into disrepute.

Keith Porteous Wood, echoing his own remarks at the “summit” meeting earlier in the day, said that there was a fundamental flaw in the Article 17 dialogue, namely, that the topics on which the churches lobbied hardest were those opposite to the views of the people in the pews. When the Pope visited the UK, a poll showed that only 4% of Catholics agreed with their church’s doctrine on contraception, only 11% on abortion, and only 11% on homosexuality. It was totally wrong that EU policies could be influenced by church lobbying against such a background. The EU should use Eurobarometer to show the true views of the people of Europe on bioethical issues and issues concerning the start and end of life.

Pierre Arnaud Perrouty of the Centre d’Action Laique asked two questions of vice-president Tokés: would he continue in charge of the Article 17 dialogue if asked under the new President of the Parliament (President Buzek’s term is expiring), and if so, would he object to a second vice-president of opposite beliefs being appointed so as to re-establish balance?

Zsolt Szilágyi, head of Mr Tokés’s cabinet, said that they were only beginning the Article 17 process. He was sure that Messrs Buzek and Tokés were both open-minded – they had, after all, both visited the EPPSP when invited. The meeting had been arranged to parallel the meeting earlier in the year with religious organisations. It was open to everyone to attend, and invitations had been issued to all MEPs and their assistants – maybe 3-4,000 emails – almost a month ago. He agreed that the panellists were not representative but hoped that a European spirit would prevail despite disagreements. He repeated that it was the President who had made the relevant decisions.

Michael Cashman said that appearances mattered as well as reality. There were areas of work he would not undertake in the Parliament because he did not want to be accused of indulging a vested interest.

Pierre Arnaud Perrouty asked for an answer to his questions: Mr Tokés said ‘later’. David Pollock asked if minutes of the present meeting would be officially produced, as he had asked in his speech.

When Mr Tokés referred to Mr Cashman’s absence for much of the meeting, Véronique de Keyser MEP said that this was an improper remark given the call of the simultaneous plenary session.

Mr Tokés then replied to various points. He said he had been entirely objective in his opening remarks but had been attacked for being a bishop – a discrimination by profession. He refused such a pejorative, anticlerical qualification of his profession. Tolerance was required even of bishops. His church had risked everything in rebelling against Ceauçescu! He had, however, noted the proposals put forward by members of the panel, including the idea of minutes, to which he could see no objection. He regretted that the speeches made at the meeting with religious leaders had not been published. He even apologised for being in charge of the dialogue: he had not chosen the position but had inherited it from the vice-president he had replaced.

Véronique de Keyser MEP said that there was not a single person at the meeting who did not hold Mr Tokés’s office in high esteem and did not respect his dignity – but there were problems over his presiding over the Article 17 dialogue. She would not consider herself fitted to conduct a dialogue with the churches: equally, the non-confessionals wanted someone who could understand their language which she thought he did not. This was not discrimination against him or an attack on him personally.

Mr Tokés replied that Ms de Keyser had not been present when Mr Cashman had spoken and should not seek to mitigate his language, but he thanked her for her remarks on the dialogue.

The meeting was drifting to a conclusion when President Buzek finally appeared. He made some remarks about the need for a serious dialogue, and for it to be properly structured. He said he would circulate the speech he had intended to make (it will be posted here when received).

Keith Porteous Wood referred to the need, if a manifestly religious person was to preside over the dialogue, for someone of a balancing persuasion to be appointed alongside. There were desultory further remarks and Véronique de Keyser said that people should send their proposals for the dialogue to President Buzek. He said that he would pass on these to his successor (shortly to be elected by MEPs) but he was sure that Mr Tokés would give him a fair report of the meeting.

The Centre d’Action Laique made a short video of the meeting which may be seen here.

David Pollock took advantage of it to expose the dissatisfaction of the humanist and secularist movement with the way the Commission is implementing the dialogue under Article 17. The EHF did not seek the dialogue, but since it exists, he said, it must be conducted fairly, without any bias towards the religions. As to the “summit meetings” there should be consultation about the subjects and about who should be invited – albeit the EHF was happy to cooperate with them, the number of freemasons at these meetings was “quite disproportionate”. His speech is here.

Replying at the end of the meeting, President Barroso acknowledged the criticism of his office’s work in organising the events and said he had noted the points made. He had a friendly, if very general, private exchange with David Pollock after the meeting.

The main focus for the meeting lay elsewhere. Just as in 2010, those invited were predominantly from secularist Freemason lodges and other organisations – a total of 13 out of the total of 16 guests. The others were David Pollock (EHF president), Pierre Galand (EHF vice-president and president of Belgium’s Centre d’Action Laïque) and Keith Porteous-Wood (president of the UK’s National Secular Society). (There was a similar number of people “accompanying” the guests of whom three out of 14 were from non-Masonic organisations – Jean de Brueker and Pierre-Arnaud Perrouty of CAL and Elizabeth O’Casey of the NSS.)

Also just as in 2010, the meeting started in a conference room and adjourned to a dining room, continuing over lunch. It ended with a press conference, at which the three Presidents (of the Commission, the Council and the Parliament) spoke and answered one or two questions. The official press release is here.  Pierre Galand intervened to describe in detail the extensive development work CAL has been doing for years in north African countries.

(l-r): President van Rompuy, President Buzek, David Pollock and President Barroso

This was of relevance as the theme for the meeting was the role of the EU as a “partnership for democracy and shared prosperity” with particular reference to the “Arab spring” countries and other EU neighbouring states.

President Barroso (of the Commission) made a wide-ranging speech, referring to the economic crisis, to the need to safeguard fundamental values, to pockets of resistance within the EU to openness and tolerance of minorities, to attacks in the name of religion on freedom of the press, but to the EU as still an inspiration to many elsewhere, not least in north Africa. His speech is here.

President Buzek (of the Parliament) spoke briefly about human dignity and the promotino of freedom. President van Rompuy (of the Council) talked of the “huge leap forward” for democracy in the past 40 years, now finally reaching the Arab world. There were bound to be difficulties in establishing democracy in countries with no experience of it – unlike most east European countries after the collapse of Communism. His speech is here.

Denise Oberlin, Grande Maîtresse de la Grande Loge Féminine de France, spoke at some length on behalf of all the French and Belgian freemasonry organisations and some others. She spoke mainly of the values these organisations supported, in particular democracy, women’s rights, equality and human dignity, and of the risks to them from the economic crisis, even in some EU states. She referred to developments in north African states and the help they would need in introducing democracy. Similar

The first speaker over lunch was David Pollock of the EHF. As noted above, he concentrated on the structure of the dialogue itself but also referred to the failings of internal EU democracy, especially in the economic crisis.

Keith Porteous-Wood also spoke about the Article 17 dialogue. Presumably it was meant to inform EU policy by consultation with the full range of religions and non-religious beliefs, but it was doomed to fail. First, the non-religious were mostly not involved (why should they be?) in the organisations that represented their interests, which were accordingly weak and too often discounted. Again, the religious population was represented by the church hierarchies who, using “well oiled lobbying and historic links”, pressed politicians mainly on issues (opposition to reproductive and LGBT rights etc) on which their own congregations substantially disagreed. He suggested that use be made of the EU’s Eurobarometer surveys to reveal this disparity. In closing he drew attention to the welcome but surprising recognition by the First Minister of Northern Ireland of the social damage done by segregated (Catholic and Protestant) schooling.

The EU’s video of the meeting and the subsequent press conference may be seen on the EHF’s YouTube channel here.

The meeting was followed later in the day by a (very lively) meeting in the European Parliament called by President Buzek to discuss how the Article 17 dialogue should be implemented in the Parliament – see our report here.