European and national regimes of religious governance, liberal equality, and toleration for Orthodox religious minorities: Decreasing opportunities for Orthodox religious minorities in the Netherlands?

Liberal, democratic states face new challenges in, on the one hand, balancing between principles of religious freedoms and non-discrimination and, on the other hand, in balancing constitutional principles with other concerns, including public health, political stability, non-violence, security, social cohesion and immigrant-integration. In a variety of ways European integration and “Europeanization” more and more impacts on the ways European societies handle religious pluralism. The EU emphasized the value of “unity in diversity”, there is the fundamental importance of individual and collective freedoms and basic rights, and equality and non-discrimination are among the most important principles that European societies and politics should stand for. These broader European values and principles are now exercising what has been called “institutional pressures” on the legal and constitutional systems of EU member states and candidate countries. They do so in particular via the ECHR and the ECtHR and, increasingly also the ECJ. This paper examines in what ways these European pressures interact with domestic pressures to adapt existing regimes of religious governance in the Netherlands. In a context of a growing “secularizing” native Dutch population, there is an increasing demand to reduce “exceptions” for orthodox religious groups. These include contentious issues such as discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or religion, ritual slaughtering, vaccination programs for children, discrimination of women. The paper focuses in particular on public debate and (European and national) jurisprudence with regard to religious schools.