‘The “Public-Private” Divide on Drift What, if Any, is its Importance for Analysing Limits of Associational Religious Freedoms?

This chapter considers the main feature of post-Second World War European constitutional secularism. It emphasizes the tensions experienced by this principle in its effective implementation and highlight the present attempt of the European Nation States to translate its pluralistic feature into a selective double-standard' approach, which is at the same time fiercely separatist and totally inclusive, depending on the degree of the presumed assimilation of religious actors into Nation States' mainstream orientations. The chapter focuses on some changes in the right to religious freedom due to this double-standard secularism, pointing out the need for the European Union to play a more decisive role to overcome two opposite weaknesses emerging in the European legal space: too abstract a consideration of constitutional rights and religious identities, on the one hand and too large a space left to national margins of appreciation, on the other.