ECLJ participates at major European Union Religious Freedoms Event

November 12, 2006

(Bratislava Slovakia)-- ECLJ representative Roger Kiska attended the Tenth Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, held this year in Bratislava, Slovakia. ECLJ first attended the conference last year when held in Istanbul, and had included in the official dossier a report on the Protestant situation in Turkey. That conference was also notable because of the reference by the Bulgarian Speaker of the House of Parliament to the European Court of Human Rights case involving the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, of which ECLJ co-represents the applicant Synod.

Approximately 150 people were in attendance at this year’s event with many notable attendees including two sitting Prime Ministers, three former Prime Ministers, a deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, President Elect of the European Parliament, the European Union Commissioner on Education and Culture, top ranking members of the European Christian Democrats, and Archbishops and Metropolitans representing several European nations.

The key area of discussion was the Balkanization process, regarding healing among the various former nations of Yugoslavia and in particular dialogue amongst its religious officials. The Prime Minister of Croatia took the opportunity to express to the group his desire for European Union membership for Croatia within two years. Another key point to the meeting was European Union expansion and the entrance of Romania and Bulgaria into Member State status, thus adding to the Union two new predominately Orthodox nations. Finally, dialogue on religious freedoms issues took place in regards Belarus and Moldavia.

ECLJ met with several top officials at the conference and established meetings with the Deputy Prime Minister of Romania to discuss their controversial religious freedoms legislation as well as a meeting with the Office of the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to discuss the current persecution of the evangelical church in Belarus.