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‘Religion at the European Parliament’: purposes, scope and limits of a survey on the religious beliefs of MEPs

The project ‘Religion at the European Parliament’ (RelEP) is an attempt to provide data on the religious profile of the European Parliament (EP). Looking at what members of the European Parliament (MEPs) believe and what they do as a result of these beliefs, the research analyses the place of religion in European politics and its influence on political elites, political socialisation, decision-making and coalition-framing. Three main incentives motivated the RelEP project. First, it is a contribution to the understanding of the new visibility of religion on the agenda of the European Union (EU). Evidence of the secularisation of European societies coexists with the recognition of the greater political and public salience of religious issues. This apparent paradox has to be documented. After a long absence, religion has become a hot topic in international scholarship since the beginning of the twenty-first century. However, the focus has been more on international relations or public policy than on politics. RelEP is a first attempt to map the religious composition of the EP, in contrast with the abundant literature detailing religion in parliamentary politics in the USA over decades. Second, religion speaks about something beyond religion. As a social universe rooted in tradition, in the depths of individual and collective identity and intertwined with the state and national culture, it is a very sensitive barometer of the extent and modalities of Europeanisation. Third, the RelEP survey includes a comparison between member-states but also between the supranational and the national levels. By comparing the way MEPs and national members of Parliament (MPs) handle religion, something can be said on the autonomy and specificity of the EU as a proper political order. Asking whether or not what happens in Brussels reflects what happens in national societies invites us to search for any bias possibly inherent in channels of European policy-making and representation. The structure of this publication is as follows. This present contribution briefly places the RelEP project in the ‘state of the art’ on religion in European politics. It describes the purposes and means of the survey, the constraints and opportunities met by the research process, the main conceptual questions underlying the questionnaire and the composition of the sample. The second contribution presents an overview of the main findings. Case studies follow on member-states which have been particularly the focus of the analysis. To complete the reflection, contributions on two non-European and radically different countries, the USA and Israel, offer a critical distance to assess the specificity of the EU.