Treaties must be respected. The President of the Humanist Association of Germany, Frieder Otto Wolf, pointed this out at the weekend to Chancellor Angela Merkel and Federal Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle as well as the German members of the European Parliament.
In a letter, he called on the German Chancellor and the Foreign Minister to work towards an end to the anti-treaty and discriminatory behavior on the part of representatives of European Union institutions. One background to this is the ongoing Irish EU Council Presidency, during which a delegation of church representatives led by Fr Patrick Daly, Secretary General of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences in the European Community COMECE, was received in the Irish capital in March 2013. The meeting took place within the framework of the open, transparent and regular dialog provided for in Article 17 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which the Union is obliged to conduct with churches and other religious communities. Article 17(2) TFEU stipulates that non-confessional organizations are to be treated in the same way as religious communities. However, a corresponding meeting with representatives of the European Humanist Federation (EHF) was rejected despite early and repeated requests, as announced by the EHF on 31 May.[1] This rejection is not an isolated case, Wolf made clear in his letter. The Humanist Association of Germany is a member of the EHF, in which more than 50 secular and humanist organizations from almost two dozen European countries are represented. “The EHF has been experiencing such discrimination by the representatives of the European Union for years,” Wolf emphasized, pointing out that in January 2013, the European Ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros had found in his decision on a complaint procedure initiated in 2011 that the EU Commission’s refusal to hold a dialogue seminar with representatives of the EHF was incompatible with VAEU requirements and that the Commission had violated its contractual obligations.[2] The continued discrimination against the EHF representatives was unacceptable, said Wolf, and these refusals not only represented a breach of international agreements, but were also perceived as a “refusal to recognize our identity and work for a peaceful and just Europe”. Frieder Otto Wolf therefore called on the Federal Chancellor and the Foreign Minister to work towards the implementation of a practice of dialog on equal terms by the institutions of the European Union and to take a public stance on the conduct of the Irish EU Council Presidency that is in breach of the treaty.
Further information
1. humanistfederation.eu: Communication from the EHF dated May 31, 2013 2. diesseits.de: EU Commission has violated contractual obligations
