Coalition agreement: Equality must not just be lip service

Commenting on the coalition agreement presented by the CDU/CSU and SPD, Frieder Otto Wolf, President of the Humanist Association of Germany (HVD), said today in Berlin: “We welcome the fact that the coalition has agreed to seek dialogue in the coming years with people who do not feel connected to any religious faith. We are pleased that it recognizes non-religious ideological communities as an enrichment of social life, whose work contributes to the cohesion of society.” The agreement presented on Wednesday stipulates that the coalition wants to “intensively cultivate” the dialog with Christian churches, religious communities and religious associations as well as ideological communities. This is the first time since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany that a coalition agreement has explicitly referred to the work of ideological communities without a religious denomination. “We already know of examples of such discussions at European level,” Wolf continued. There, the dialog between the ideological communities and the EU institutions is regulated in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and is carried out by the European Humanist Federation. “We therefore know that the equal treatment of non-religious people at this point is only a first step until this agreed exchange actually takes place. Equality with religious communities, as expressly provided for in the Basic Law, which has now been substantiated by the coalition agreement, should not just remain lip service.” Some topics for the talks with the future government have already been mentioned in the coalition agreement, Wolf continued. “We will campaign here for what we consider to be the necessary reform of state church law, which the coalition intends to maintain unchanged according to the agreement. We also see a clear need for discussion on church employment law so that the fundamental rights of non-denominational and denominationally affiliated people are better respected and realized in the future. But we also see numerous other issues, from the beginning to the end of life, where we need to communicate our positions more clearly.” He criticized the fact that the coalition has decided to stick with the state collection of church taxes and against opening up marriage to all. “Many Western European countries are already further ahead when it comes to demanding the elimination of legal, social and symbolic inequalities,” said Wolf. Ultimately, however, the coalition agreement also contains a clear call for citizens in Germany to make use of the opportunities available. “A large proportion of people in Germany today live their lives without being bound to religious denominations. Many of them are committed to our society and contribute to the values that unite them, to its cohesion and to public culture. In the view of our federal association, the equality in dialog now agreed in the coalition agreement offers a good way to advance the urgently needed equality of the many people with a humanistic and secular worldview in our country on another level as well.”