The Rules of Engagement: Identifying the Defining Features of the European Union’s Sui Generis Model of Religion-State Relations

Fearghas O’Beara is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Religion, Human Values, and International Relations at Dublin City University and is head of the European Parliament Liaison Office in Ireland. This post is based on chapter 5 of his book The European Union and Religion: The Supranational Meets the Supernatural (Routledge 2026).

On 1 July 2026, Ireland took over from Cyprus the six-monthly rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, convening and presiding over the governments of the 27 EU member states until the end of 2026. On 7 July, Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheál Martin, presented his government’s legislative program to the plenary of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, under three broad themes indicative of the current challenges facing the Union in an increasingly volatile geo-political context: competitiveness, security, and values. Two days later Prime Minister Martin met at Government Buildings in Dublin to discuss this program with representatives of Europe’s main Christian churches.

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The Quiet Architecture of Religious Freedom at Work

Fábio Ferreira Nascimento is a Brazilian attorney and PhD candidate in law at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

A few years ago, if someone had suggested that multinational corporations would become important laboratories for religious freedom, many scholars of law and religion would have been skeptical.

After all, corporations are not churches. They are not courts. They are not the democratic or civil society institutions we usually associate with protecting freedom of religion or belief (FoRB). And yet that is precisely where some of the most interesting FoRB-related developments are taking place today.

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Disarming AI: Human Rights on Shifting Ground

Viktor Poletko (PhD, KU Leuven) is a political theorist and head of business unit at an international software consultancy.

This post is a part of our series on Magnifica Humanitas.

The idea that this Pope would kick off the contribution on social ethics was pretty obvious. Given the papal name he chose for himself, the theme of his first encyclical was easy to guess. But while Pope Leo XIII famously addressed the societal and economic effects of the Industrial Revolution, Leo XIV turned his attention to an allegedly overhyped topic of the AI revolution.

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