EU flags fly in front of the European Commission headquarters in Brussels.
‘’The European Union does not protect its religious minorities anymore,’’ said Yohan Benizri, president of CCOJB, the umbrella group representing Jewish organisations in Belgium, in a reaction to the ruling delivered by the European Court of Justice allowing member states to go as far as outlawing religious slaughter in an approved slaughterhouse.
The Court was responding to the question on a preliminary ruling by the Belgian regions of Flanders and Wallonia which have banned religious ritual slaughter by requiring the prior stunning of the animals thus making EU-law based religious slaughter exception meaningless.
The ruling runs contrary to an opinion given in September by the European Court of Judtice s Advocate General who suggested the opposite.
‘’The European Court of Justice today delivered a potentially devastating ruling on an issue that has plagued European Jewry for years, the right to slaughter animals in the kosher tradition, a millennia old practice that puts animal welfare and minimizing animal suffering at its very core,’’ said the European Jewish Association (EJA), which represents Jewish communities across Europe.
EJA Chairman: “What a terrible message to send to European Jewry, that you and your practices are not welcome here. This is a basic denial of our rights as European citizens. We cannot let it stand and will pursue every recourse and avenue to ensure that it doesn’t and to protect the rights of Jews everywhere in Europe.’’