IS THE EUROPEAN UNION GOING DEEP ON DEMOCRACY AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM?

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful for travel and research funding from ReligioWest, a research project funded by the European Research Council and based at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. I received helpful comments and criticism on earlier version of this essay from participants at workshops at Georgetown University in September 2013 and at the European Parliament in February 2014. I would like to thank Prof Silvio Ferrari and Jean Bernard Bolvin for their suggestions.

Notes

1. Denis de Jong is a Member of the European Parliament and Co-President with Peter Van Dalen of the European Parliament Working Group of FoRB, a group of like-minded MEPs dedicated to promoting and protecting FoRB in the external action of the European Union.

2. The point is clearly made by Leustean (2011, 296):

Evidence that religious actors started to be publicly taken into account on the corridors of European institutions came in 2008 when the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA), which advises the President of the European Commission, published a document on its website indicating that, at that time, it was in contact with 67 bodies, including diplomatic and non diplomatic representations in Brussels.

3. For more information see the EED website at https://www.democracyendowment.eu/.

4. Catherine Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, was appointed in 2009 as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy for the European Union.

5. For instance, according to Kurki (2012, 4):

While development aid agencies may prioritize social welfare ideals of social justice and equality, the Directorate General for Trade's preference is for strongly liberal forms of economic and political transition in target countries. Incoherencies exist in EU democracy support (and between policy agendas) because of the lack of conceptual agreement on democracy's meaning.

6. The global objective of the call is to reinforce the fight against discrimination on four different grounds: (1) Discrimination against indigenous people; (2) discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people; (3) discrimination on the ground of religion or belief (or non-belief); and (4)worst forms of discrimination against girl infants-female infanticide.

7. Note that the Working Group played an important role in the drafting of the “EU Guidelines on the Promotion and Protection of Freedom of Religion or Belief.” As the Report highlights:

Through an intensive dialogue with the EEAS, Members of the EP Working Group were directly involved in the drafting process of the EU Guidelines on FoRB. Many of their suggestions were also included in the European Parliament Recommendation to the Council on the FoRB Guidelines. (European Parliament Working Group on FoRB 2014, 15)

8. It is worth noting as well the recent German coalition agreement, the full text of which is online at http://www.bucer.de/fileadmin/dateien/Dokumente/BQs/zu_BQ200-299/zu_BQ284/Koalitionsvertrag.pdf. See also World Evangelical Alliance (2014).

Additional information

Pasquale Annicchino is a Research Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Italy. He serves as book review editor for Religion and Human Rights: An International Journal and is a member of the editorial board of Quaderni di Diritto e Politica Ecclesiastica published by Il Mulino.