Naming of Religious Organizations in Romania

Cătălin Raiu is an associate professor at the University of Bucharest, Romania.

Mihai Miron is a senior expert in the government of Romania’s State Secretariat for Religious Affairs.

Tiers of Religious Entities in Romania

In Romania, religious freedom is guaranteed both at the constitutional level and through Law No. 489/2006 on Religious Freedom and the General Status of Religious Denominations. This law was negotiated and adopted by the Romanian Parliament as a prerequisite for Romania’s accession to the European Union in 2007.

Romania fits into the mainstream European religion-state model[1] as it does not have a state or national church. All religious organizations are legally equal in their relationship with state authorities and among one another, and discrimination is prohibited. The Romanian legal framework permits the operation of all types of religious communities, whether registered or unregistered, making the free exercise of religious freedom completely unlinked to formal registration.

(more…)

Continue Reading Naming of Religious Organizations in Romania

Your Name Is Religion: Public Authorities’ Assessment of Faith Groups in the Spanish Registration System

alberto

Alberto Jose Ferrari Puerta is a lecturer at the Department of International Law, Ecclesiastical Law and Philosophy of Law, Complutense University of Madrid Law School.

Many national legal systems provide for the existence of an official registry for the recognition of religious denominations. In Spain, the Register of Religious Entities was introduced by the Organic Law on Religious Freedom of 1980. This law gave substantive development to the fundamental right enshrined in Article 16 of the 1978 Spanish Constitution, which reestablished religious freedom after nearly 40 years of its suppression under the Franco dictatorship. Article 5 of the Organic Law explicitly provides that religious denominations acquire legal personality upon registration in the Register.

(more…)

Continue Reading Your Name Is Religion: Public Authorities’ Assessment of Faith Groups in the Spanish Registration System

Restricting Religious Names: Three Recent Cases

Dmytro Vovk is a visiting associate professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

The name of a religious group is usually considered an aspect of its autonomy. The name can be based on religious history and theology and serve as the group’s self-representation to its members, the public, and the state. Other posts in this blog series discuss how, from the perspective of freedom of religion or belief (FoRB), a religiously neutral state can interfere in naming for non-religious reasons, such as protection of intellectual rights, prohibition of morally inappropriate or pejorative names, or prior use of the names by other religious organizations. These restrictions apply similarly to religious organizations and to NGOs, political parties, and even business corporations alike.

(more…)

Continue Reading Restricting Religious Names: Three Recent Cases