NEWS

Information Service of
the Serbian Orthodox Church
April 4, 2003

INTER-ORTHODOX TALKS ON
DRAFT CONSTITUTIONAL TREATY OF EUROPEAN UNION

A two-day inter-Orthodox meeting was held in Heraklion, Crete, from March 18-19. The meeting was dedicated to the formulation of recommendations to be sent to the European Commission working on the Draft Constitutional Treaty. It was a working meeting of representatives of the Orthodox Autocephalous and Autonomous Churches of Europe, held under the auspices of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, namely His Holiness Bartholomew, Patriarch of Constantinople. His Eminence Emmanuel, Metropolitan of France, representative of the Department for the Orthodox Churches with the European Union was the coorganiser of this important Conference.

Representatives of the Orthodox Churches of Constantinople, Russia, Serbia, Romania, Cyprus, Greece, Poland, Albania, Slovakia and Finland attended the Conference. Other attendees were also Professor of the Constitutional Law, Mr Evangelos Venizelos – Minister of Culture in the Government of the Republic of Greece, numerous journalists and students. His Eminence Meliton, Metropolitan of Philadelphia presided over the Conference.

The topic of the Conference was "The Standpoint of the European Institutions towards Churches and Religions, in Context of the Tradition of the Orthodox Church". This was the topic of the address of His Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew. He formulated three basic standpoints:

  1. specification of the position of all the religions and Churches, including the Orthodox Church
  2. behaviour of the member states of the European Union, which should specify the criteria as regards the relations with religions and grant them or not legal benefits which would be in conformity with religious toleration, religious freedom, whereat the detachment of religion from the state should be annulled,
  3. criteria of classifying the destructive or criminal organisations which pretend to be religious in the same category with recognised Churches.

    4.  

    After long and thorough discussion, the participants to the Conference reached the following conclusions and expressed them in 6 points:

    1. The Constitutional Treaty of the European Union has to include the principles and values of Christian, Biblical, Greek and Roman ancient heritage;
    2. The Charter on Basic Human Rights should contain Christian anthropological values;
    3. Human rights must be protected both individually and collectively, as rights of the citizens of Europe. We would like to point out the misuse of biotechnology, and to underline the importance of the protection of the institutions of marriage and family, and the focus of all our efforts on the upbringing and education of our children;
    4. Religious freedoms must be protected not only as individual right of every person, but as the right of all the traditional European Churches and religions;
    5. The Constitutional Treaty Declaration 11 of Amsterdam on the unity of religious communities and regulation of relations between the Church and the State, must be entered into the European Union Constitutional Treaty;
    6. Institutions should set clearly specified criteria that would stipulate a clear attitude towards sects and proselytism.