EU Citizenship and Religious Liberty in an Enlarged Europe

This article intends to contribute to the theoretical debate on how EU citizenship could be regarded as a bundle of common European individual rights (and, to a lesser extent, obligations) and part of a democratic polity in which every citizen counts equally irrespectively of his/her religious belonging and faith. The EU perceives itself as a community based on shared values. Since there is no European people, nor a European polity, common values play a core role in European polity building. The question, however, is whether common values can be experienced by the EU citizens in daily life and to what extent there are common values in the EU Member States. These issues are explored using the non-discrimination principle on grounds of religion, as a litmus-test for the existence of common values within Europe