The Separation Of Church And State In The European Union

11 Pages 2742 Words

Separation of Church and State in the European Union

The European Union, the intergovernmental organization between 25 European nations, faces many challenges concerning where it will go, how it will develop, and how and when it will expand. As its work continues and further develops, the Member States take many steps to be more united and uniform. Such developments are the birth of the Euro as the EU‘s monetary unit and the abolition of borders between the Member States except the United Kingdom.
The writing of the EU Constitution is another development. However, this one has raised much controversy over one issue: the omission of religious reference in the Constitution. This issue raises many questions, and one of them is whether the EU should seek standard policy regarding the state-church relationships of the Member States. Perhaps a coherent way to look at and discuss this question is by comparing the EU to another union, such as the United States. The difference between their structures and developments can point out how the EU should behave about the separation of church and state. The US, being a federation, believes that constitutionally, the church and state should be separated. This policy helps the US function as a successful body, under the principles it has set. However, unlike the US, the EU does not need to find a uniform way in dealing with the church-government relationships in order to function as a successful body, since the EU has no central government and is not an organization which interferes with the strictly internal policies of the Member States.
The US developed in such a way that a uniform in church-state relationships is needed. Ever since the colonial period, there was an established religion in some of the colonies. For instance, New England had a Puritan domination, and the Colony of Virginia had the Anglican Church as official religion. However, with the Revolutionary War, these ...