The Churches appeal to the EU

The recent opening, in Brussels, of the work of the Convention, given the task of formulating a draft European Constitution, represents an event full of significance from many points of view, be they political or juridical. Political, because on the choice of the “issues” that will be included in the Convention agenda – apart from those already planned – will depend the drafting and content of a document which future generations of Europeans will look to for inspiration; juridical, because the provisions that compose the document are destined to give a juridical form to decisions considered opportune in the long term. The major themes on the Convention’s agenda already planned at the Laeken Summit comprise, not least, the increased cooperation to combat the trade in human beings, the harmonization of family law, Eurojust, the implementation and amendment of the Dublin convention on immigration, the question of asylum procedures, and the common control of external frontiers. The enlargement of the Union remains a problem of great actuality which is perhaps approaching a solution, thanks to the efforts of the States concerned both on the economic and democratic levels. As far as the juridical instruments are concerned, it seems that recourse to the framework-convention will be privileged; this leaves greater scope to the states and regions, all of them called to intervene in the constitutional process, considered as a new method of reform of the treaties to be achieved with the contribution of the various EU institutions and not behind closed doors, with the aim of drafting a document not of residual character, i.e. not based on previous decisions, but full of recommendations and options. As far as the participants in the Convention are concerned, provision is made for the presence of representatives both of the national parliaments and of the European Parliament, as well as of the Commission, and representatives of the member states and of the candidate countries, of the economic and social Committee, of the Committee of the Regions, of the trades-unions and employers organizations, and of the regions furnished with legislative power. It is really odd, however, that no provision was made for the participation of the Churches in a continent in which the most recent war, i.e. the conflicts in the Balkan area, had an interreligious, as well as an interethnic cause. At a time when the Churches themselves are seeking and emphasizing their common monotheistic roots, the silence on their peacemaking and counterbalancing role is somewhat surprising. That role can only exist and only be performed where religious freedom in the wide sense is permitted, i.e. religious freedom not just conceived as freedom of worship, but as both individual and collective manifestation and practice of a faith. In effect the few meagre words in art. 23 of the European Charter of fundamental rights are unsatisfactory and insufficient with a view to guaranteeing that both the individual and the community may enjoy the religious freedom of which so many were deprived for decades in some areas of the continent. This guarantee could be given only by the presence within the Convention of the representatives of the major European religions and, first and foremost, of the Catholic Church. This observation should be placed in the same context, and has the same tendency, as that concerning the absence in the above-cited Charter of any express reference to the “Christian roots of Europe”, to which the Holy Father has drawn attention on various occasions. These “roots” are to be traced both in the various historical analyses, and in the cultural and even monumental heritage of the old continent, where almost every town and village contains the traces of a past inseparably linked to Christianity. Now, the Convention provides an opportunity to review the relations between the religious confessions and States and between them and the Union, as well as at the reciprocal level. These relations need to be regulated with clarity and without those features that historically characterized the relations between states and the Catholic faith, consisting of concessions, albeit on a mutually agreed basis. Instead, the relations need to be between equal partners, and based on reciprocal respect on matters of respective competence. They must guarantee to the citizens of Europe the exercise of the right of freedom of religion expressly contemplated in art. 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.