The European Court of Human Rights has found that Greece violates the rights of schoolchildren to freedom of religion by forcing their parents to reveal their religious beliefs in order to exempt them from religious education classes.
Applicants to the ECHR were five Greek nationals, parents and children, who live on the small Greek islands of Milos and Sifnos.
The applicant parents argued that the procedure for exemption from religious classes was contrary to the European Convention. They complained that if they had wanted to have their daughters exempted from religious education, they would have had to declare that they were not Orthodox Christians. Furthermore, they complained that the school principal would have had to verify whether their declarations were true and that such declarations were then kept in the school archives.
They relied in particular on Article 9 (freedom of thought, conscience, and religion) and Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 (right to education).
Under the Greek Constitution and other legislative texts, such as the Law on Education and various ministerial decisions, religious education is mandatory for all schoolchildren at primary and secondary level.
Before appealing to ECHR,, the parents had turned to the Greek Supreme Administrative Court that, however, had dismissed the case due to “lack of importance.”
The ECHR unanimously ruled that there had been:
- a violation of Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 (right to education) to the European Convention on Human Rights, interpreted in the light of Article 9 (freedom of thought, conscience, and religion).
The Court stressed that the authorities did not have the right to oblige individuals to reveal their beliefs. However, the current system in Greece for exempting children from religious education classes required parents to submit a solemn declaration saying that their children were not Orthodox Christians. That requirement placed an undue burden on parents to disclose information from which it could be inferred that they and their children held, or did not hold, a specific religious belief.
Moreover, such a system could even deter parents from making an exemption request, especially in a case such as that of the applicants, who lived on small islands where the great majority of the population owed allegiance to a particular religion and the risk of stigmatisation was much higher.
Furthermore, as pointed out by the applicants, no other classes were offered to exempted pupils, meaning they would have lost hours of schooling just for their declared beliefs.
Stressing that the authorities did not have the right to intervene in the sphere of individual
conscience, to ascertain individuals’ religious belief or to oblige them to reveal their beliefs, the Court held that there had been a violation of Article 2 of Protocol No. 1, as interpreted in the light of Article 9 of the Convention.
The Court held that Greece was to pay 8,000 euros (EUR) in respect of non-pecuniary damage, jointly, to the first three applicants and the same amount, jointly, to the fourth and fifth applicants.
It awarded EUR 6,566.52 to the first three applicants in respect of costs and expenses.
ECHR ruling in pdf here.
