El Tribunal de Justicia de la Unión Europea frente a la religión y las creencias

Abstract

In just two years, the Court of Justice of the European Union has been faced with numerous issues related to religion and beliefs. With this, the old consolidated references on this subject (Van Duyn, Prais…) about the role of the fundamental right of religious freedom, or about religion in general, in the European Union system have been surpassed. The aim of this paper is to draw some conclusions about how the Court of Justice of the European Union deals with religion and beliefs. To this purpose, religion and beliefs in primary law, which is framework and condition to subsequent normative implications, are examined firstly. Several decisions related to religion or beliefs in the period between 1974 and 2019 are analysed afterwards. The analysis carried out concludes with some notes about the concept of religion in the jurisprudence of the Luxembourg Court, as well as about the formulation and content of the principle of religious neutrality. In general, exception made of specific cases, the Court of Justice of the European Union grants adequate protection to the fundamental right of religious freedom and an adjusted treatment to religious groups with respect to the requirements of European Law.