Protection of European Values at the International Level: The European Court of Human Rights and Freedom of Religion

Fundamental values and principles such as rule of law, democracy and human rights are at the heart of growing concerns within Europe and its Institutions — from the European Union to the Council of Europe. This Article explores how the European Court of Human Rights protects European fundamental values through its main instrument—the European Convention on Human Rights—, with a special focus on article 9 and religious freedom. Religion is a powerful social force, it is still at the heart of social dynamics and henceforth, through the values it tends to endow individual behavior with, is at the heart of the value frameworks structuring societies. A chronological reading of the Court’s judgments in religious cases shows the Court has developed, through the years, a specific reasoning that spins around a set of values said to underly the whole Convention, for being the fundamental values and principles of the European Society as a whole. The Article argues this approach tends to favor the latter values and principles sometimes over religious behaviors. It amounts, therefore, to consecrating a European value order on which the Convention is said to rest, from which it is said to rise, and at the conservation of which its application aims.