In the European Union “unfortunately the common political rules are too few and we are consequently witnessing a grave uncertainty about the rights that the churches and religious communities should enjoy”. So said ambassador Robert Weninger, political counsellor to the President of the European Commission, intervening in the meeting on “The new Europe: enlargement, opportunities and problems” sponsored in Vienna in recent days by the Association for the promotion of Catholic social ethics in central and southern Europe. “The problems of the churches at the present time Weninger pointed out are the competence of national laws that regulate them in very different ways in the individual member states: ranging from a nationalized church to a relation of lay type and the clear separation between church and state”. Yet a certain number of these problems are recognized in European Community law, such as Sunday as a day of rest and observance of the main religious festivities”. What’s lacking Weninger stressed is “an office of coordination at the central level of the EU for religious communities”. Weninger expressed his conviction of the importance of the contribution made by the religious communities to the process of European unification which, if it is to advance, has a need not only for the reform of the EU institutions, but also for the promotion and reinforcement of the “society of citizens” in a Union conceived in a federalist manner. Enlargement should bring, for all the parties involved, “an enrichment to numerous levels and a ‘europeanization’ of the EU, which would remain a fragment without it”. According to Weninger, there is no substance to the allegations about “an islamization of Europe” since the some 15 million Moslems living in Europe are for the most part immigrants in contrast to American Moslems, of whom a significant percentage are converts and, as such, strongly conditioned by the language and culture of their countries of origin.
