For religious freedom

November’s issue of Europe Infos, the news bulletin of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) in cooperation with the Jesuit European Office (OCIPE) once again delves into the situation of the Roma with an editorial by Jesuit Fr. Frank Turner. Johanna Touzel reports on the meeting held past October 12 between Church representatives and the EU presidency in Belgium. Touzel also authors a briefing on the document for combating poverty which COMECE and other Church organizations submitted to European institutions. José Ramos Ascensão from the COMECE secretariat underlines the theme of the protection of human life, threatened by a provision that defends animals from being used for research purposes to the detriment of human embryo stem cells. Vincent Legrand’s op-ed is titled “the freedom of religion in EU foreign policy with its neighbouring countries”.Christians’ persecutions. Past October 5 the European Parliament hosted a conference on “Persecution of Christians” on the initiative of COMECE, in cooperation with MEPs Konrad Szymanski (ECR) and Mario Mauro (PPE). According to recent figures, “75% of deaths linked to religion-based hate crimes affect people of the Christian faith”. To the light of this fact it is easy to understand the reasons for the conference summarized in an article by Stefan Thönissen. If anti-religious ideologies disappear, intolerant religious ideologies increase (Berthold Pelster, Aid to the Church in need). Some 100 million Christians are victims of acts of violence, especially in North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Maldive, Afghanistan, Yemen, Mauritania, Laos and Uzbekistan (Arie de Pater, ODI). The Conference gave the floor to major witnesses of Christian persecution over the world, those of Sudanese bishop Hiiboro Kussala and Msgr. Louis Sako, Caldean archbishop of Kirkuk, Iraq, in particular, were very moving. Indeed, according to the bishop “the Christian community is risking extinction” with 900 deaths since the 2003 invasion and attacks on over fifty Churches. MEPs Szymanski and Mauro thus presented a Declaration asking that religious freedom be incorporated into European External Policies of the EU, by adding to Agreements with Third Countries a binding clause on the respect of freedom of religion. In order to be adopted the declaration must be signed by 380 MEPs within the next three months.EU, Africa and Millennium Goals. The EU must extend its glance to the South in order to find solutions that will enable the achievement of the Millennium goals by 2015. The message was conveyed by a delegation of bishops and representatives of African civil society visiting Europe prior to the UN Millennium Development Goals summit in New York. The slow pace of poverty-reduction and the ongoing struggle to eradicate world hunger show that current development strategies failed. Jean Saldanha, from CISDE, made known that the African delegation “underlined the need to reconsider relations between Africa and the EU in order to give Africa the possibility of determining its future”. The African continent counts a large number of recent democracies of young people who wish to create a dignified life for themselves in their countries of origin. The question coming from Africa is: is Europe willing to do its utmost to concretize the aspirations of these young people? A concrete request: European companies must demand transparency on the transition of raw goods from Africa, but Europe doesn’t take a stand to this regard. The first set of consultations on the revision of the Market Abuse Directive has not included the obligation for enterprises to provide accounts of their activities at national level. The youth and employment. The youth unemployment rate (under 25) in Europe amounts to 21%, that is, 23 million people, although low birth rates create an apparently favourable situation for the youth. This contradiction was the subject of a round table organized by the OCIPE Jesuits at the University Centre Saint-Ignatius Antwerp (UCSIA) in Brussels. José Ignacio Garcia sj, noted that given the ongoing crisis measures in favor of youth employment have proved to be costly and scarcely efficient. This is the reason why the selectivity principle was supported by governments whose efforts were focused on weaker brackets: young people, women, handicapped, marginalized groups… A measure for example is the creation of guarantee systems for the youth (a concept which the European Commission had included in the new strategy COM (2010) 477). In different ways these systems are called to represent a political commitment to ensure job opportunities for the youth or complementary training, as well as apprenticeship upon the termination of their academic program, before reaching the stage of unemployment when reintegration becomes more difficult and cumbersome.