🍻 Selber Bier Brauen

Er duftet nach Weihnachten und weckt Kindheitserinnerungen. Weihrauch kann Schmerzen dämpfen und die Haut beruhigen. Der heilige Rauch steckt nun in Crèmes und Luxusparfums.

Die Popularität von Elektroautos wächst in der EU, aber sie liegt weit unter den Erwartungen der europäischen Autobauer. In asiatischen Schwellenländern dagegen wollen immer mehr Menschen Elektroautos kaufen.

Die Forderung nach einem Verbot der weiblichen Genitalverstümmelung sei rassistisch und ungerecht. Das schreibt eine Gruppe von Anthropologen und Soziologen in einer seltsam verhedderten Schrift.

Ein Vater verbindet ein Spielzeug-Furby mit Chat-GPT. Seine Tochter übt bei uns im Podcast-Studio mit diesem Matheaufgaben. Erweist sich künstliche Intelligenz als guter Lehrer?

Ein Vater verbindet einen alten Furby mit Chat-GPT. Damit schafft er seiner Tochter ein Spielzeug, das schlauer ist als jedes Lexikon. Was braucht es, damit Kinder von Spielzeugen lernen? Wie viel Nähe zu einer Maschine ist gut für ein Kind? Und ist KI ein guter Lehrer?

Sexual and reproductive rights in Europe are increasingly part of an intense struggle. This includes legal contestation through litigation and third-party interventions at, in particular, the European Court of Human Rights. It is however important to recognize that contestation also takes place in other, political and public, arenas. Interconnected actions, forming part of a broader European conservative right mission, includes political and legal action in many other arenas, including in the European as well as national parliaments.

This struggle is about a political and religious backlash to a largely secular, progressive cultural and human rights revolution. It confronts opposing sides of (transnational) civil society, who both make moral, “sacred” claims, while profaning the opponent. Here, I will first discuss the European conservative right’s mission, the sacred dimensions to this mission, and its increasingly dense transnational network. I will then exemplify cases of struggle by turning to initiatives both on the European level (the promotion of a right to abortion as part of the European Charter and the ECI campaign My Voice, My Choice) and domestic parliamentary debates (the Netherlands).

The European Right’s “sacred” mission

Struggles around sexual and reproductive rights pit more liberally, progressive-oriented or “frontlash” actors against other, including non-liberal, often radical-conservative “backlash” organizations. In the actions of the latter, religion is an explicit and core dimension. The European Right – linking a variety of right-wing populist actors with radical, religious-conservative ones – is active on various fronts in order to promote an alternative vision to what are often indicated as “woke liberalism”, ”progressive ideology”, “gender ideology”, and the alleged European liberal hegemony. The supranational project of European integration and its complex human rights regimes, both in terms of the European Union and the Council of Europe, are a core target of these groups.

The European Right’s “sacred” mission is grounded in religion and religious claims. Religion – in the form of distinctive interpretations or utilisations of Christianity – is of strategic value and is instrumentalised in variegated courses of action. It forms the background for proposals for fundamental reform of the European institutions, it is used as a justification for strengthening national sovereignty, it serves as a fundamental value basis for contesting progressive rights promotion, and it provides a key legitimation for the restriction of rights on the domestic level. Regarding rights, there are roughly five areas where radical-conservative counter-movements are predominantly active, in particular in terms of third-party interventions, but not only: a) Right to family, parental authority; b) Sexual/gender identity; c) Reproductive practices; d) Euthanasia, and e) Freedom of expression. In recent years, these areas have become increasingly contested.

The sacred and the profane

The argument here follows a cultural- and political-sociological approach, and is inspired by Durkheim and later sociologists building on his work. From this sociological perspective, radical-conservative actors seek to construct an alternative to liberal understandings of rights, by the profaning or desacralising of what they see as hegemonic, liberal understandings of rights. Contemporary “backlash movements” put the hegemonic sacred (etym. “sacer, holy, dedicated to a god”) and profane (etym. “outside of the temple”) distinctions on their heads, by criticising “sacred” civil, liberal characterisations of rights – such as the liberal emphases on universalism, individualism, equality, and emancipatory rights extensions for minority groups – and turn them into profane – i.e. polluted, impure – ones (as promoting hyper-individualism, endorsing non-natural, “deviant” forms of behaviour that defy “natural” ones). In this, radical conservatives claim the status of victims for those who hold religious, that is, Christian views.

Radical-conservative actors might be understood as heterodox movements, in that they contest the alleged hegemony of secular, liberal understandings of rights, and their main forms of institutionalisation. One often repeated argument from the radical-conservative right is that liberalism undermines the religious dimensions of societies. In this, they lay claim to their “sacred”’ commitments (“deeply held values that are non-negotiable”) and the sacrality of their positions, which denies such “sacred” status to the positions of the opposition (including liberal, pro-choice standpoints).

What is ”sacred” or “absolute” is expressed in recurrent claims in both judicial and political contexts. This includes an insistence on subsidiarity and national sovereignty, not least to protect national value (Christian) communities from European intervention. The radical-conservative right further stresses (“sacralises”) the collective over the individual, for instance, in terms of “sacrificial motherhood” (the subjection of the role of the mother to the “needs” of society, including in demographic terms), relating children’s rights and the status of the family to the best interest of the whole society, claiming euthanasia is not a strictly private matter, or safeguarding the majority’s (religious) feelings against blasphemous statements by individuals in the public sphere.

The networked European right

The “sacred” mission of radical-conservative actors is transnationally organised in various networks. One instance is a network called “Agenda Europe”, which has links to various radical-conservative actors that engage in political and legal mobilisation. In its key statement, Restoring the Natural Order (original version: 2014¹⁾), the religious, sacred dimension is justified through natural law, strongly endorsed as an antidote to the “Cultural Revolution” of the 1960s which has allegedly led to a “process of de-civilisation”. Natural law is put forward as a civilising force, while human rights are profaned as at best a pseudo-religion: “human rights documents are no absolute truths, but the outcome of a political process”. Natural law is instead ”independent of politics, or of the human will”. In fact, “[t]here is a Natural Law, which human reason can discern and understand, but which human will cannot alter” (italics added). In relation to the right to abortion, the preface of the document states that “[t]he culture of life associated with Christianity has been largely abandoned and replaced by a veritable ‘culture of death’, which, out of inner necessity, will destroy from within any society that accepts and allows it”.

A right to abortion in the EU Charter

Understood in Restoring the Natural Order as an “encouraging” recent development, one clear point of rupture in relation to the right to abortion is the reversal of the Roe v. Wade judgment (1973) by the United States Supreme Court, in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organisation (2022). In this judgment, the Supreme Court pushed the right to abortion into a more restrictive, conservative direction by rejecting abortion as a constitutional right and leaving authority to regulate to individual states. This constitutes a major turning point in the US, but equally provoked a reaction on the other side of the Atlantic, prompting attempts to safeguard achievements around the right to abortion in European states (culminating for instance in France in the constitutionalisation of the right to abortion in 2024).

On the European level, it mobilised political forces in the European Parliament to adopt a resolution that called for the recognition of the right to abortion in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, and which explicitly stated it acted against a pushback on gender equality and SHRH [sexual and reproductive health and rights] backsliding and to constitutionally protect the rights that are under attack. In the related parliamentary debate, the initiators (of Renew) called for the entrenchment of the right to abortion in the European Charter, while opposing, right-wing actors claimed that the European Union should defend the right to life as well as children’s rights, and not promote a (profane) “culture of death”.

Rights contestation in domestic arenas

The campaign for a European right to abortion equally triggered reactions in domestic arenas. Let us take as an example the Netherlands, a country that until recently was considered a pioneer in the advancement of progressive rights. Here, two motions, initiated by the conservative-Calvinist SGP, and supported by radical-conservative and populist parties, were adopted by the Dutch parliament in March 2025. The government was asked to evaluate the consequences of the abolition of a 5-day period of reconsideration for women who want to abort, as of January 1, 2023. The second motion asked to anticipate the evaluation regarding abortion procedures (currently planned for 2028). While for the SGP the motions were to investigate into an explosive increase in abortions, according to the centre for sexual expertise “Rutgers”, the two motions could have negative implications for the right of self-determination of women.

In reaction, Dutch left-progressive actors put forward a parliamentary motion for the recognition of a right to abortion in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights as well as in the UN Covenant of Civic and Political Rights in September 2025. The intention was to safeguard (“sacralise”) the right to abortion in a world in which it is increasingly endangered. This motion provoked a further counter-move by conservative, religious political groups, to urge the government to prevent the adoption of the right to abortion in European treaties (insisting on the national prerogative to regulate abortion). According to them, countries ought to retain the sovereign right to regulate abortion in ways they see fit, while the EU allegedly is trying to impose its (profaning) values on member states in areas such as marriage, sexuality or abortion.

My Voice, My Choice Initiative

Returning to the European level, the European Citizens’ Initiative My Voice, My Choice was equally a reaction to the developments around Roe v Wade in the US, as well as to the situation in certain European countries with de jure or de facto restrictions on abortion. The ECI managed to collect over a million signatures, meaning it was successful. On 2 December, the European Parliament held a hearing with the My Voice, My Choice campaigners. And on 17 December, the Parliament voted – with 358 votes – in favour of a related motion.

The visibility of the campaign provoked a clear reaction from radical-conservative forces. In preceding months, Agenda Europe had claimed on its blog that it is “in fact a resounding defeat for the abortion lobby”, not least because the earlier “diametrically opposed” ECI One of Us gathered 1.7 million signatures in 2014. One of the promoters of this ECI claimed that “[t]his result proves once again that Europe is pro-life at its core”. The ECI depicted the liberal-progressive position in profane, impure terms, denouncing abortion as “prenatal child murder”, a call for EU-funded “abortion tourism”, and a “normalisation of baby-killing”, while understanding human dignity in the sacred terms of including the dignity of all human beings, ostensibly including “children in utero”. In the Netherlands, the pro-life organisation Schreeuw om het leven (Cry for Life) organised a petition campaign to be presented to the Dutch Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra. And in the run-up the December hearings and vote, various counter-events were organised at the EP, such “Real Choice Means Real Support” and “My Voice My Choice: A Legal, Moral and Financial Fraud”. The pro-abortion motion was accompanied 4 other motions against abortion, tabled by radical-conservative right-wing MEPs and party groups, stressing the principle of subsidiarity, the lack of EU competence, respect for national identity, and “motherhood as an essential contribution to society”.

Conclusion

The battle over the sacred and profane is evidently not a new phenomenon in Europe (just think of the debates over the preamble of the European Constitution or the Lautsi v Italy case). What does seem novel is the intensity, visibility, and active engagement in multiple arenas of increasingly well-organised radical-conservative actors, greatly facilitated by an ever more hostile international environment.

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On 18 December 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) handed down a momentous judgment, in which it found that the Constitutional Tribunal (CT) of Poland does not satisfy the requirements of an independent and impartial tribunal established by law, and also that through the decisions of that Tribunal Poland had failed to fulfil its obligations under the Treaty of European Union, as well as under the general principles of autonomy, primacy, effectiveness and the uniform application of EU law. It also found that Poland, through the actions of its CT, breached the principle of the binding effects of judgments of the Court of Justice.

As one can see from the very recital of the Court of Justice findings, the importance of the judgment cannot be higher. Its main significance at least for Poland, lies in the fact that, by now, two top European courts have declared that the “Constitutional Tribunal” (and from now on,  I will be placing these words in inverted commas advisedly) cannot be considered an independent, impartial court, under the two constitutive acts in the Council of Europe and the EU, respectively. Four years after the landmark decision Xero Flor v. Poland of the European Court of Human Rights, its counterpart in the EU, the CJEU, has found the Polish constitutional court to be an irregularly composed judicial body.

This is the main practical dimension of the recent CJEU’s decision, to which I will return in a moment. But I need to say a word about the second aspect of the judgment (captured in the Commission’s first two complaints, considered by the Court, related to the primacy of EU law, as violated through the “CT” judgments of 2021), which is much more “academic”, in both senses of the word.

Primacy of EU Law as a Moot Issue

It is “academic” in the sense that it has no practical consequences because, for all intents and purposes, the issue of denial of EU law’s primacy over domestic laws became moot. Since the Commission’s infringement action that triggered this judgment (15 February 2023), the government in Poland has changed hands, and it has now accepted the failure to fulfil its obligations alleged against it by the Commission in the present case. Nevertheless, the Court of Justice acted on the principle that it is for the Court to determine whether such failures exist, even if the State concerned does not deny them. True, the two outrageous judgments of the “Constitutional Tribunal” of 2021, which were the direct basis of the infringement action, are still theoretically valid, but they have no practical significance for a simple reason that no one, in Poland or in the EU, takes the current “CT” seriously. It is worth noting, as it may go down in the history of illegality in Europe, that the “Tribunal” in these two judgments of 2021 managed single-handedly to find unconstitutional (under the Polish Constitution) both some parts of certain articles of the TEU (notably, of Articles 1, 2, 4 and 19) and the CJEU’s case law interpreting these articles – thus committing an impressive double ultra-vires act!

But this aspect of the CJEU’s verdict of 18 December 2025 is also “academic” in another sense: legal scholars, especially those not directly concerned about Poland’s rule-of-law crisis, will find the reaffirmation of the meaning of EU law’s primacy and its relationship with “national identity” as referred to in Article 4(2) TEU, as giving them a tasty food for thought – even if the food in question is not particularly surprising or innovative. Perhaps the most important statement of a universal value in the long judgment is a restatement of the non-regression principle: “A Member State cannot … amend its legislation, or indeed its case-law, in such a way as to bring about a reduction in the protection of the value of the rule of law….” (para. 179). And this is precisely what Poland under PiS did, using the “Tribunal” as its tool for such a reduction, by preventing Polish judges from verifying the lawfulness of the procedure for appointing judges to the new, politically controlled, chambers of the Supreme Court.

A Defective Tribunal

But this short comment on the judgment of 18 December will focus only on the first, Poland-specific aspect (as captured in the Commission’s third complaint). This is what is of particular interest for Polish public opinion and political commentariat. The Court of Justice found, predictably, that the institution that refers to itself as “Constitutional Tribunal” cannot be characterized as “an independent and impartial tribunal established by law” as required by the Treaty on the EU (Art. 19(1) second subparagraph) and the Charter of Fundamental Rights (Art. 47). This is due to (1) the irregularity of appointment of three judges in 2015 (and, consequently, their successors, of which two are currently on the Tribunal), (2) irregularities in appointment of the President of the CT in 2016 (even though her successor recently replaced her). These combined irregularities, along with the absence of three properly elected judges on the bench since 2015, have contaminated (my word, not the Court) the entire court since then.

What will be the likely reactions in Poland, and in particular in political and legal elites, to the judgment? This is a relatively easy question to answer: in today’s extreme political polarisation, two opposing camps will respond by consolidating their positions. The right-wing political opposition centred around the PiS party, which ruled from 2015-2023, will cry foul and accuse the CJEU of “once again” (allegedly) overstepping its competences by “imposing” upon a Member State certain rules on the subject matter that were never (allegedly) conferred upon the EU. This is, of course, nonsense – while the specific structure of judicial bodies such as constitutional courts is not within the scope of EU law, fundamental principles such as the rule of law and judicial independence are of great concern to the Union as a whole. (It is nicely summarised in the judgment, paras 102-3).

This critique was anticipated, and eloquently responded to, in the Opinion by Advocate General Spielmann in this case: “It is true that a Member State cannot be compelled to accede to the European Union against its will. However, once it has made the sovereign choice to accede, it must respect the ‘rules of the game’ in accordance with Article 49 TEU, which requires Member States to respect the values of the European Union after their accession – values which they have accepted freely and in full knowledge of the facts” (para 92 of the Opinion, references omitted). Be that as it may, it is certain that the verdict of the CJEU will serve the right wing to accuse the Union of breaching Poland’s sovereignty and its main judicial body of acting blatantly ultra vires.

What will the democratic parliamentary majority and the government headed by Donald Tusk make of the judgment is more interesting – and uncertain. The legislature has already established, in a parliamentary resolution of 6 March 2024, and the government has restated it even more forcefully in its Resolution of 18 December 2024, that the “Constitutional Tribunal” in its present shape and with its present actions is not fulfilling its constitutional functions and that there is a need of a “new creation of the constitutional court” (the words of the parliamentary resolution) and that “repair actions must be taken aimed at restoration of the functioning of the constitutional court” (the words of the government’s resolution). But it was not followed by any practical legislative action due to the President’s hostility to the parliamentary majority (then Andrzej Duda), who has the power of legislative veto and the power to trigger constitutional scrutiny by… yes, the “Constitutional Tribunal”. This is precisely what President Duda did, and the “Tribunal” has, as expected, found the bill unconstitutional, thus breathlessly rejecting a principle “nemo judex in causa sua” (no one should be a judge in his/her own case).

What will the government do?

With the continuing erosion of the number of PiS-appointed judges on the “CT”, the government will likely wait until it can appoint a majority of the Court. But, with the judgment of the CJEU as its new argumentative asset, it may be willing to undertake a more radical action, and to convert its bark into a bite. Legislative changes are unlikely, due to the presidential veto, which is not overridable by the current majority. What would a “radical” action look like? “Extinguishment” of the current composition of the “Tribunal”, based on the combination of judgments of two top European courts, pronounced through a new parliamentary resolution and followed up by an executive action, is a possibility. But is it likely? I don’t think so. The government’s thinking about law oscillates between a muscular approach of disregarding the illiberal enclaves, which are the leftovers of the 2015-2023 PiS rule, and a formalistic legalism that requires scrupulous compliance with the letter of the law, whatever its pedigree or substance.

 

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In contemporary Europe, the protection of religious minorities continues to rest predominantly on the constitutional architecture of religious freedom and non-discrimination. Yet this framework, shaped by the secular orientation of the state and the presumed uniformity of its legal order, often proves insufficient to capture the specific vulnerabilities and identity-based claims of minority communities. Therefore, legal systems that proclaim neutrality and equal treatment may struggle to provide effective safeguards in practice.

Protecting minorities therefore requires more than balancing rights. It demands recognising the specific forms of vulnerability produced by their social and constitutional position. Bridging this gap requires a legal and theoretical shift, one that brings religious freedom into dialogue with minority-rights principles and develops tools capable of responding to the real needs of minority communities.

Identity and diversity

We live in a moment in which both the rights of religious minorities and religious freedom itself are threatened by the resurgence of nationalist or populist tendencies, often justified by appealing to the role that a specific religion is claimed to have played in shaping a people’s identity and culture (Ferrari 2021).

Today, the European debate on religious minorities and religious freedom focuses primarily on questions of identity and, more specifically, on the majority’s fear of losing its own identity in the face of the cultural and religious diversity accompanying migratory flows (Hopmans 2023). The concerns voiced by public opinion and by parts of the political spectrum have led several European legal systems to adopt restrictive legislative and judicial measures targeting religious practices typically associated with minority faiths. Although these measures may appear neutral, their practical application inevitably produces a discriminatory impact on the lives of minority-community members.

In an increasing number of cases, appeals to religious freedom have been overshadowed by a cultural conception of religion. It is indeed difficult to argue that measures such as bans on the construction of minarets, the growing restrictions on the display of religious symbols, or proposals to limit the Muslim call to prayer are grounded in a legitimate limitation of religious freedom. Rather, these measures appear to rest on cultural and ideological considerations.

Undoubtedly, the religious dimension is one of the oldest aspects of diversity, and it has recently re-emerged as a focal point within the evolving discourse on religious freedom. Religious diversity inevitably pushes the liberal democratic state to re-evaluate its inherent position of neutrality and challenges the ethnocentrism typically associated with Western societies in defending their essential religious and cultural traditions. Confronted with increasing religious diversity, the legal systems face the challenge of finding new, tailored mechanism for accommodating it, keeping in consideration the principles of non-discrimination, reasonableness and equality. This is particularly evident in the case of the European Islamic minority.

It is widely recognised, secular European states are not unfamiliar with the religious phenomenon and generally express a value system that is explicitly or implicitly aligned with the framework of values promoted by the dominant religion (Nieuwenhuis 2012). The separation between state and religion gradually took shape on the assumption of a broadly homogeneous religious landscape within the national community. A form of religious monism that time, demographic change, and migratory movements have since fractured. Consequently, the protection of religious minorities has become one of the most contentious issues in the evolution of the European Union’s law on religious freedom.

Religious minorities in EU law

Within the EU’s political and legal framework, religious minorities are addressed only implicitly. Unlike other minority groups, their protection has developed indirectly, as part of the broader transformation of the human-rights framework in which the right to freedom of religion is situated.

Although Article 10 of the EU Charter recognises freedom of thought, conscience, and religion as a fundamental right, the TFEU does not confer a specific EU competence in religious matters, except with regard to the prohibition of discrimination. In particular, the interpretation of the principle of neutrality set out in Article 17 TFEU – which largely leaves decisions in this field to the Member States – makes the asymmetries affecting religious minorities difficult to address in a uniform manner. As a result, the ability of Article 10 of the EU Charter to provide effective protection is significantly weakened. Article 17 TFEU should, in fact, be balanced with the obligation imposed upon Member States to respect religious rites and cultural traditions under Article 13 TFEU, and the recognition of minority rights as a value of the Union under Article 2 TEU.

The Court of Justice’s interpretation of Article 10 of the EU Charter is likewise marked by a restrictive approach, favouring a model of formal equality at the expense of the substantive equality of minority groups, whose position is structurally more vulnerable within contemporary European social and legal contexts. The Court has addressed the religious rights of minorities only indirectly, for example when assessing whether an employer’s ban on wearing religious symbols amounts to direct discrimination on grounds of religion. In this regard, the Court has held that a prohibition on wearing any visible form of political, philosophical, or religious expression in the workplace may be justified by the employer’s interest in presenting a neutral image to clients or in preventing social conflict. However, such justification must correspond to a genuine need on the part of the employer. In balancing the rights and interests at stake, national courts may take into account the specific context of their Member State and, in particular, any domestic provisions that offer stronger protection for religious freedom.

The Court has therefore adopted a deferential stance towards national neutrality policies, relying on a notion of neutrality as “equal treatment for all”. Yet this approach, although it duly acknowledges the notion of indirect discrimination, overlooks the disproportionate effects such measures may have when the display of a religious symbol is unavoidable, as in the case of Muslim women, and, more broadly, on members of non-majority faiths. This reveals an understanding of religious freedom that fails to account for the real social impact of such restrictions. It appears also insufficient to capture the specific nature of minority religious identities, which require not only freedom from interference but also the structural conditions necessary for substantive equality.

The jurisprudence of the Court of Justice mirrors, in principle, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights under Article 9 ECHR. Given this approach and considering that most European constitutional systems contain no specific provisions on religious minorities, it is legitimate to ask why European states have created dedicated protections for ethnic, national, and linguistic minorities but not for religious groups, who remain confined to the general framework of religious freedom (Henrard 2011). An even more pressing question is whether the current configuration and interpretation of religious freedom is truly capable of ensuring effective protection for religious minorities.

From a strictly legal perspective, the absence of a specific system for protecting religious minorities can be explained, at least in part, by the convergence between the secular character of the state, the uniformity of state law, and a protection framework centred on religious freedom and non-discrimination. Yet this system appears ill-equipped to address the actual needs of religious minorities, thereby creating a potentially fertile ground for intercultural conflict. It must also be noted that the notion of minority takes the form of a variable-geometry category, shaped by the different forms of affiliation that an individual may hold. This requires a conception of the individual not as an isolated subject, but as a member of multiple social groups, each characterised by its own history, culture, language, and religion. The universal value to be protected is therefore not merely religious freedom in the abstract, but the very existence of this plurality of communities and minority identities, which risk assimilation, if not disappearance, without adequate safeguards (Cavalcanti 2024).

In this context, the application of religious freedom protections can prove particularly complex in practice. While confessional practices are undoubtedly protected by the recognition of religious freedom, it can become challenging for a judge in a secular state, where the principle of separation prevails, to consider an institution or a confessional practice within the context of a dispute. This issue becomes even more complex when the practices that contribute to defining the identity of the group to which the parties belong lie midway between the cultural and religious spheres. This makes it difficult to determine the extent to which a given behaviour derives from religious sources or traditional ones, or how much the cultural aspect influences the interpretation of a religious norm and vice versa (Cavalcanti 2024).

In cases where culture and religion tend to overlap, as in the case of Muslim minorities, the different legal treatment of religious and cultural practices risks creating situations of disparity and different outcomes depending on whether the judge, faced with practices difficult to classify, chooses to categorise the behaviour in one category or the other. This has inevitable negative consequences on the principle of substantive equality. The issue of the relationship between religious identity and cultural identity gains further significance when considered in the context of a multicultural society where different value systems coexist. Societies, although at the peak of the secularization process, are permeated by religious claims.

The system of protections offered by fundamental rights in general, and by religious freedom in particular, as currently interpreted, does not appear sufficient on its own to safeguard religious minorities. The special vulnerability of these groups, especially with regard to identity rights and substantive equality, is not met with appropriate protection. A protection that need not be absolute, but reasonable and proportionate within the limits of the constitutional principles of the legal order (Schnabel 2019).

One of the central challenges in protecting religious minorities is therefore the identification of their real and specific needs and balance them with the fundamental principles of the legal order. This requires creating a synergy between religious freedom and religious identity, fostering a dialogue between the paradigm of fundamental rights and the more specific framework of minority rights.

Conclusion

What distinguishes minority rights from universally recognised human rights is the emphasis placed on the development of communities and the cultural identities tied to them. Whereas religious freedom presupposes the existence of religious communities within which individuals may practise their faith; minority rights identify the very existence of those communities as the object of legal protection. The key to enabling a synergy between the two frameworks lies in their shared collective and institutional dimension.

Minority rights could enrich religious freedom by incorporating the right of minority religious groups to participate in decision-making processes that affect them. At the same time, the core elements of religious freedom, such as the individual’s freedom to choose, change, or abandon their faith, become essential to a proper understanding of the rights of these minorities. The protection and development of the identity of religious minorities represents a means of strengthening religious freedom for all, for the latter is indivisible, and a society in which only religious majorities are free is not one that truly respects freedom of religion. It is therefore necessary to seek legal solutions capable of providing common ground for dialogue between minority groups and the state. The adoption of specific measures aimed at ensuring adequate conditions for the development and protection of religious minorities, measures that go beyond what follows from religious freedom alone, transcends the interests of minority groups and ultimately concerns the interests of each one of us.

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