Category: European Union

Where do we think the EU might be going; and will Britain go there too?

(A talk given to ‘Faith in Europe’, 17 January 2013)

Sir Michael Franklin

For those like me who support the EU and British membership of it, the past few years have not been happy ones.

It is not only in the UK that public opinion has become much less enthusiastic about the EU and it institutions. The European Commission regularly takes the temperature of public opinion through a series of polls. The best known asks people whether or not they think the EU is a ‘good thing’. It shows that over the last five years average support has declined from 52% to 30%. It has happened in virtually every EU country. In France, for instance, 52% of those polled five years ago said membership of the EU was a good thing: last year that had dropped to 46%. In Germany the figures were 65% and 54%. In Spain the fall was even more dramatic: from 73% to 55%. (No surprise that the corresponding figures for the UK showed only 33% thinking that membership was a good thing 10 years ago, and only 26% last year – but more of that later). No doubt much of this dissatisfaction reflects the general feeling of economic gloom and the perceived failure of governments, both national and European to rise to the occasion. Nevertheless, it provides a difficult political backdrop against which governments have to deal with the problems the EU faces.

Of these, the biggest is clearly the formidable problems arising from the world wide banking and economic crises for the EU as a whole, but notably for the future, indeed the survival of the EU’s single currency, the eurozone. But first let me say something about another immediate problem for the EU: the fixing of the EU budget for the next few years.

In purely numerical terms the EU budget is not a big issue: the total EU budget, some £120 billion is only about 1% of Europe’s GDP, whereas total government expenditure in most EU countries amounts to around 40% of GDP. The UK’s net contribution to the budget is a mere £7.4 billion, scarcely more than 1% of government expenditure, about half what Germany pays and substantially less than France or Italy.

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Religion and the European Union: Identity, Politics, Law, Lobbies

Lucian Leustean and John Madeley

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At the Faith in Europe Briefing Meeting on 20 November 2008 Lucian Leustean spoke on the subject of the changing self-understanding of Europe. Much of his talk was based on material he and John Madeley had commissioned for a special issue of the journal Religion, State & Society (RSS) (issue No. 1/2 (March/June ) 2009) which they co-edited. The following text is an abridged version of their article, ‘Religion, Politics and Law in the European Union: an Introduction’, in that issue of RSS. It is reprinted here by permission of the publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.informaworld.com
Copies of the 230-page special issue of RSS can be ordered via the journal’s Editor , Philip Walters, at a special price of £30. The publishers say that it may be possible to offer a lower price if a number of people were interested in making a bulk purchase.
The material in the special issue of RSS is also going to be published by Routledge as a book, Religion, Politics and Law in the European Union, on 6 August 2009, approximately 256 pages, at £75.
If you are interested in obtaining a copy or copies of the journal or the book please contact Dr Philip Walters.

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The principal focus of the contributions to this volume is on examining the role of religion within the political evolution of the European Union and its institutions and to identify the ways in which religious communities have related to the challenges of an expanded united Europe. What role have religious communities had in the construction of the European Union? Is there a common European identity rooted in religion as claimed by some? In which ways have religious communities entered into dialogue with the European institutions? To what extent and by what means can religious communities be seen to influence decision-making processes in the EU?

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Is the Expanded EU More Receptive to Christian Voices?

Jonathan Luxmoore

(Note: This summary of a presentation at a Briefing Meeting on 19 July 2007 was updated in March 2008)

Is the Christian heritage of Europe being disregarded or ignored? Despite all the evasions and prevarications of recent years, can we be confident that the EU still embodies some kind of Christian purpose?

Three years after the major enlargement of the EU, controversy over the religious heritage of Europe and the specific Christian contribution appears to have calmed, and we are now in a more settled situation. There is clearly a deep reluctance to acknowledge Europe’s Christian heritage directly. As expected, there was no reference to God or Christianity in the EU’s new Reform Treaty, adopted at the last Inter-Governmental Conference in December to replace the ill-fated Constitution. But it is also clear that churches and religious communities are being listened to, at least sometimes! I personally don’t believe that we are witnessing ‘mass apostasy’ or ‘spiritual suicide’ in Europe (with due respect to Benedict XVI, George Weigel and others). The situation is much more complex and nuanced.

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