By European Parliament, 2017

After centuries of religious wars, many European states perceived themselves in the late 19th and 20th centuries as the avant-garde of secularism worldwide. They therefore considered that religion would play an ever-decreasing role in politics. As a result, when the EU institutions were established they had no mechanisms for dealing with religious issues. Nevertheless, Europe has had major religious conflicts to face since 11 September 2001 and the Jyllands-Posten Prophet cartoons controversy in 2005. Under the Lisbon Treaty, mechanisms have been put in place to organise dialogue between the EU institutions and the representatives of confessional and non-confessional organisations in Europe. In 2013, the EU published guidelines to mainstream its approach to the promotion and protection of freedom of religion or belief (FoRB), and in 2016, Ján Figeľ was appointed Special Envoy for FoRB outside the EU. In the EU Member States and the United States alike, there is a growing interest in improving understanding of and engaging with religious organisations. This interest is key as the number of people for whom religion is an important part of identity is rising worldwide, alongside increasingly uneasy co-existence between followers of different religions, and important shifts in global religious demography.

Attachments:

European Parliament (2017) Religion and the EU\'s external policies

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