Religious Parties, Issue Framing and Morality Policies in EU Governance

Despite strong trends of secularization, morality policies have become increasingly salient at all levels of EU governance. This is puzzling because religious doctrines lost its relevance in shaping individual and collective beliefs systems and thus, in offering value-orientation for morality politics. We find, however, a large debate in the morality policy research on whether the religious factor is of relevance anymore. A bunch of studies attests that the religiosity of a nation, the presence of religious or church-associated parties, and the constitution of the state-church relationship influence the politicization of morality issues and the strictness of regulation. More recent contributions, by contrast, question the explanatory power of religion for morality policy-making. The paper contributes to this controversy by examining Christian-Democratic Parties and their discursive strategy in terms of morality policies in three Western European countries and in the European Parliament (EP). Do these actors refer to religious doctrines when defending their policy position? Or do they underline basic (secular) values of European treaties such as “human dignity”? And do we find varying framing strategies among the countries respectively between the governance levels? Besides an in-depth empirical analysis, the paper offers a theoretical framework explaining the framing strategies of religious actors across countries and governance levels. In so doing, the paper contributes not only to the debate on the relevance of religion in politics today but also to the latest research on the various interpretations and uses of the concept of “human dignity” in EU governance.