Is the European Union Secular? Christian Democracy in the European treaties and jurisprudence

Abstract

This paper develops a theoretical framework for understanding the way in which the relations between politics and religion are structured institutionally at the level of the European Union. The argument advanced is that, although it is common to assume that European institutions provide a bulwark for the protection of ‘secularism’ and ‘laicite’, a more adequate category for describing the way in which these relations are structured within the framework of the European Union as it exists today is offered by an ideal-typical notion of ‘Christian Democracy’. In order to substantiate this thesis, the paper focuses on the discussion of a number of concrete features of the institutional structure of the European Union that do not fit with traditional definitions of secularism and laicite, but resonate with the way in which the notion of ‘Christian Democracy’ was theorized in the work of some of its most representative exponents, such as Luigi Sturzo, Alcide De Gasperi and Jacques Maritain.