By Marco Ventura · Keynote at the EBU Annual General Meeting, Brussels, 9 May 2026
Introduction
I will take inspiration from the title of this gathering – religious freedom for Buddhists in Europe – and will briefly elaborate on what I see as the religious freedom Buddhists need in Europe, but also the religious freedom Europe needs the Buddhists to stand for. This religious freedom, I will argue, is defined by five features: it is legal, inclusive, diverse, European and Buddhist. I will now go through the five features, one by one, before the conclusion.
1. Legal religious freedom
First and foremost, religious freedom is supposed to protect from undue State interference on the one hand and from social hostility or oppression on the other. This can only be achieved if religious freedom does not only rely on culture and society, but is solidly built in the law of the land, in European law and in international law. In fact, as a human right, religious freedom has a distinctive legal dimension. The state has the negative obligation to abstain from restricting religious freedom through its agents and actions: on the one hand, restrictions on the right to have, change or not to have a religion or belief are absolutely nor permissible; on the other hand, only those restrictions of the manifestation of religious freedom are permissible which are strictly necessary and proportionate in a democratic society to pursue a legitimate aim defined by the law. The state also has the positive obligation to prevent and combat impermissible restrictions which might occur in the society.
The legal infrastructure of religious freedom is quintessential. It helps giving shape to a democratic and pluralistic political process, to frame the responsibility of individuals and institutions, to structure procedures and actions. Legal religious freedom is about the status and the recognition you need and are entitled to; but it is also about the freedom not to be forced into an undesirable status with no detriment for the enjoyment with religious freedom rights, or into some kind of recognition you do not want to seek for.
The legal feature of religious freedom is of essence for the protection of Buddhists in Europe, but also for their organisation, their responsibility, their actions, and ultimately, their participation in society. In his ‘The interaction of law and religion’ Harold Berman posits that «Law is not only a body of rules; it is people legislating, adjudicating, administering, negotiating – it is a living process of allocating rights and duties and thereby resolving conflicts and creating channels of cooperation». Indeed, legal religious freedom is that ‘living process’.
2. Inclusive religious freedom
It is not possible to isolate religious freedom from the intense conflicts we face in our society and globally. As we observe in large parts of the world, religious freedom is systematically denied, in practice if not in theory. As we observe in culture wars in the US, religious freedom is easily weaponized as a partisan tool and discredited. As we observe in Europe, even within the European Union, large sectors of the public opinion, influential politicians, government officials and even judges understand religious freedom in very narrow and selective terms. The distinctions of religion and nonreligion, majorities and minorities, traditional and nontraditional, new and old, big and small, hierarchical and non-hierarchical, sometimes even extremist and foreign as opposed to moderate and indigenous are mobilized in order to justify restrictions or inequalities. Against this background, inclusive religious freedom is what Buddhists in Europe need and are entitled to.
This is what religious freedom looks like anyway, if we consider the international documents produced in the last thirty years, especially by the Organisation for the Security and Cooperation in Europe and the United Nations. The formula FoRB – freedom of religion or belief – is the result of that elaboration: it captures the variety of believers and non-believers protected by international instruments and constitutional laws, and the complex articulation of the relevant freedom. «Freedom of thought, conscience and religion», and «freedom to manifest one’s religion or belief» are the component of art. 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and art. 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights and art. 10 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
This means that there is no one fits all model of what religion or belief should look like for the sake of their legal protection. Categories should be handled with extreme caution, as through the law and beyond the law, Europe is learning how to be at the same time multireligious, multi-cultural and secularized, less religious or differently religious. This is reflected in the formulation of article 17 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union, where both «churches and religious associations or communities» and «philosophical and nonconfessional organisations» are recognized with their «identity» and «specific contribution» and included in the dialogue with the Union.
Now, if one wants to assess whether the command of an inclusive religious freedom is taken seriously in the European Union and beyond, or whether the slogan of ‘FoRB for all’ is taken seriously, there is no better test than the trajectory of Buddhists in Europe. Your achievements and failures in asserting yourself witness how challenging true inclusivity can be and how much we need an inclusive religious freedom: for Buddhists and for all through Buddhists.
3. Diverse religious freedom
If law is to be broadly construed as a ‘living process’, religion is also to be broadly construed for the sake of a serious protection. Again Harold Berman to make this point: «Religion is not only a set of doctrines and exercises; it is people manifesting a collective concern for the ultimate meaning and purpose of life – it is a shared intuition of and commitment to transcendent values».
The challenge of going inclusive with religious freedom is a challenge inherently pertaining to the diversity, multiformity of religion as a deeply multi-dimensional reality. Different believers and non-believers have different needs and different claims. It is not enough for them to be included, if they are not included with their diversity. It is not enough for legal religious freedom to be an inclusive religious freedom if that comes at the detriment of diversity. Inclusive religious freedom can be the foe of diverse religious freedom. This is the case when registration and recognition procedures demand uniformity, when diverse organisations are forced into the same format, when the law produces sameness instead of facilitating otherness.
If we take religious or belief diversity seriously, we cannot underestimate the risk of uniformity, aware as we are that structural formatting through state law might imply – I would be tempted to say, inevitably implies – substantial formatting of principles, doctrines, precepts, liturgies, and everything religious or belief organisations rely upon in the pursuit of their unique, authentic path. Diverse religious freedom is thus needed along with legal and inclusive religious freedom. On this vein, the reference to the «identity» and «specific contribution» of religion and belief organisations at art. 17 TFEU should be understood and operated with a true engagement for religion or belief diversity. This can be very demanding on both sides: it is challenging for state officials – and societies at large – to relinquish control and renounce the ambition to push for reassuring conformity; but it is also challenging for religious or belief organisations to assert their independence from state support and stay true to their uniqueness.
Again, Buddhists are very well placed to witness the struggle for diverse religious freedom. And again, as diverse religious freedom is needed for Buddhists in Europe, Europe also needs Buddhists to stand for diverse religious freedom. Which brings us to our fourth feature.
4. European religious freedom
The fourth feature pertains to the European element of religious freedom. Since World War II, with the emergence of international human rights, and in the last thirty years in particular, religious freedom has been asserted, at least in principle, by international institutions. In particular, in the European integration process, European states and pan-European institutions have played a unique, and remarkable role.
Thanks to the Organisation for the Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Council of Europe religious freedom has developed across national borders as a human right to be advanced through the political intergovernmental process, in the OSCE system, and through the international justiciability established by the Council of Europe driven system of the European Convention and the European Court of human rights. A lot has been disappointing and frustrating with both systems, a lot can be criticized, and yet they represent a unique experiment of transnational dialogue – and even convergence – on the secular state, religious rights, in particular on the autonomy of religious or belief organisations, with national authorities, and supreme and constitutional courts specifically, both contributing to and learning from the process. Those who value a European religious freedom are thus aware of such an experiment with human rights and religion and are committed to its development.
Europe has also witnessed the growth of a largely unintended law and policy on religion or belief through the single market of the European Union. This is partly coinciding with the human rights systems, insofar as the European Union has expanded its reach as to commit itself to the protection and promotion of fundamental freedoms in general and freedom of religion or belief in particular. But what I would define the law and policy of the EU on religion and belief has a much broader scope. My hypothesis is that it is possible to identify four channels through which the development of the EU has been and still is deeply significant for religious freedom: 1) the non-alignment of the European Union with any religion, and the debate on neutrality, impartiality, secularism and the Christian or JudeoChristian identity or roots of Europe; 2) the «open, transparent and regular» EU dialogue with religious or belief organisations mandated by article 17 TFEU; 3) the EU competence on religion to be negotiated against the twofold limit of vertical and horizontal subsidiarity: it is not for Brussels to decide what is better decided in Madrid or Warsaw; and it is not for the EU Commission to decide which mantra should be recited and how; and yet, it is healthy that Madrid and Warsaw are not alone, and even that monasteries are not alone, if the dialogue with the EU is developed in a meaningful way; 4) EU action on FoRB within and especially outside the European Union, in particular through actions on religion and development of the kind of the ‘religion in society’ project.
In this case as well, the European feature of religious freedom is a reminder that Buddhists need to be both aware of the specific EU challenge with religion or belief, and responsible for it. The voice of Buddhists is much needed at the Commission, at the Parliament, at the various EU levels and bodies and actions, and even at the Court of Justice of the EU, a formidable actor, especially through its decisions on employment and non-discrimination such as the very recent one, last March, on the German case of Katolische Schwangerschaftsberatung, when the judges in Luxembourg set limits to dismissal of an employee by a Catholic social association on account of her decision to leave the Church.
If a legal, inclusive, and diverse religious freedom is needed by Buddhists, and if Buddhists are needed in the advancement of that freedom, the European Union is a critical experiment within the broader experiment of cross-national European religious freedom.
5. Buddhist religious freedom
Here comes the fifth feature. The Buddhist character of religious freedom. Of course, I have no pretense to identify, much less to dictate, what could be specifically Buddhist about religious freedom in general. What I mean by this fifth feature is that the four previous features are needed by Buddhists in Europe insofar as Buddhists can appropriate, understand and reinvent those features in their own distinctive ways, through their internal witnessing of the legal (their Dharma), the inclusive (their union, the U of EBU), the diverse (their plurality) and even the European (their Europeanness, the E of EBU).
In the preparation of this keynote, I have gone back to my first religion related meeting in Brussels, in 2001, in the context of what was then the EU Commission initiative called «A Soul for Europe». In my folder I have the list of participants. Amongst them was Kenneth Holmes from the Kaguy Samye Ling Monastery in Scotland, the first Tibetan Buddhist Centre to have been established in the West. I have also found an unsigned document of 5 pages, presumably from Kenneth Holmes himself, presenting first «what Buddhist groups are and need to protect» and second their «participation in the future of Europe». Twenty-five years from then, a lot in that text can be identified as an extraordinarily clear view on what is at stake with both religious freedom in the European integration and the participation of Buddhists to the process. As clear a vision is if possible even more crucial today, when Europe is confronted with multiple crisis within and outside, and the partners in the dialogue between religious or belief organizations and the European Union have a key contribution to give, and an equally key responsibility to bear.
Conclusion
I have presented five features that tentatively define at the same time which religious freedom is needed for Buddhists in Europe, and which religious freedom Buddhists need to stand up for in Europe. That religious freedom is legal, inclusive, diverse, European and Buddhist.
The 2001 document on Buddhists and the EU I mentioned above, raised the question of what Buddhists need in terms of property, promotion through the media, fundraising, bringing ministers from extra EU countries, organizing meetings and ceremonies, employment. We learn from that list that religious freedom is a very practical, down to earth, everyday matter for believers and their communities. The document also raised the question of «an efficient consultative process» at the EU level in view of the contribution from all faiths to ethical issues, «helping the poor and the needy», «the environment, especially the sentient part of Nature», immigration and education. We learn from this other list that religious freedom is also a matter of general concern, well beyond the contingency of one specific community.
Today, no less than in 2001, we should care for the religious freedom of Buddhists in Europe if we care for Buddhists, of course, and even more, if we care for Europeans, the whole of mankind and all forms of life.
About the author
Marco Ventura is Professor of Law and Religion at the University of Siena, Italy, where he has taught since 2001. He holds a PhD from the University of Strasbourg (1992) and previously taught at KU Leuven (Belgium). He is an associate researcher at the University of Strasbourg/CNRS and serves on several international academic and research boards. From 2016–2022, he was an OSCE/ODIHR expert on freedom of religion or belief, contributing to key policy guidance. He has advised EU and international initiatives on religion, security, human rights, and interfaith dialogue, including G20 Interfaith Summits and EU–Vietnam and EU–Gulf Cooperation Council dialogues. From 2016–2021, he directed the Center for Religious Studies at Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento. He has also held leadership roles in European research networks on Church and State. His research focuses on freedom of religion or belief, law and religion, comparative religious law, and the politics of religion. He has authored seven books and over 100 articles in Italian, French, and English, with works translated into several languages.
This article first appeared in EBU Magazine #15 – Practicing in Turbulent Times (Autumn 2026). Download the full issue as PDF or browse all issues.