To:
President of the European Commission, Ms. Von der Leyen
CC:
Mr. Josep Borrell, High Representative/Vice President
Ms. Kaja Kallas, Candidate High Representative/Vice President
Mr. Margaritis Schinas, Vice President
Mr. Olof Skoog, EU Special Rapporteur for human rights
Mr. Frans van Daele, EU Special Envoy for the promotion of freedom of religion or belief outside the EU

Reforming the institutional position of the Special Envoy for freedom of religion or belief outside the EU from the European Commission to the European External Action Service (EEAS)

Brussels, 13 September 2024

Dear President Von der Leyen,

We would like to start by thanking you for the reappointment of an EU Special Envoy for freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) outside the EU, in your previous term. Our contact with Mr. van Daele has been good this year, and we wish to emphasise that the following recommendation is purely structural, and one that we began exploring prior to his appointment.

On 28 February 2024, the European Parliament passed a report that included a call upon the EU to review the institutional positioning of the mandate of the Special Envoy such that “it be integrated into the EEAS in a similar way to the other special envoys and Special Representatives”.¹ As the European Platform against Religious Intolerance and Discrimination (EPRID) – a network of organisations that specialises on FoRB – we are writing to highlight and commend this position of the Parliament to you.

The purpose of this reform would be to improve the institutional coherence, capacity, and focus that the Special Envoy mandate provides to the promotion and protection of FoRB, while also ensuring that it is pursued and advanced in its proper place: as an indivisible element of the EU’s wider human rights policy.

The EU Guidelines on the promotion and protection of FoRB² rightly affirm the “universality, indivisibility, inter-relatedness, and interdependence of human rights”. We are concerned that the EU’s institutional structure should also reflect this fact.

From its inception, the institutional position of the office of the Special Envoy has been unusual. Whilst assiduous efforts have been made to keep a close working relationship with the EEAS, and the EU Special Representative for Human Rights, formally, the mandate has stood separately. It is our assessment that this institutional separation of the FoRB mandate from the EEAS is both operationally inexpedient and conceptually incoherent. Operationally, it adds unnecessary inter-institutional complexity, threatening strategic coherence. Beyond this, we are concerned that this institutional separation could perpetuate an incorrect and unhelpful view of FoRB, which as you will know already suffers extensive politicisation – a phenomenon that has also been detailed by United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief in a recent report.³

Understanding that the European Parliament’s language gives room for various possible institutional forms, we would support any such reform as an improvement if it fulfills the following two criteria: (1) a repositioning to within the EEAS, ensuring that there is swift continuity (no gaps) during any transition; (2) at least the same levels of resourcing capacity and level of seniority. We also believe that such a repositioning could help reduce the time periods between mandate-holders, which in the most recent instance was a 15-month long vacancy; and the instance prior to that, 16 months.

Again, we commend the Parliament’s position on this to you, and if needed, stand ready to meet to discuss the proposal in more detail.

Yours sincerely, The European Platform against Religious Intolerance and Discrimination (Members include: Association Internationale pour la Défense de la Liberté Religieuse; Bahá’í International Community; CSW; Conference of European Churches; European Evangelical Alliance; European Union Office of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Mensen met een Missie; Middle East Concern; Open Doors International; Quê Me: Vietnam Committee on Human Rights/International Buddhist Information Bureau)

 

¹ https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2024-0106_EN.html
² https://www.eeas.europa.eu/sites/default/files/137585.pdf
³ Landscape of freedom of religion or belief – Report of the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief (30
January 2023)