|TOP|The Conference of European Churches (CEC) met earlier in the week with President of the EU Commission, President José Manuel Barroso, on the role of European churches.

“European churches are important partners in the dialogue about values in the European Union,” said Rev. Jean-Arnold de Clermont, President of the CEC, during the meeting with Barroso in Brussels on Monday.

The CEC delegation, which included the Russian Orthodox priest Georges Ryabykh, co-moderator, and the director of the Church and Society Commission, Rev. Ruediger Noll, stressed religious education as a factor for the development of values that should not be forgotten.

|AD|“The EU Commission President expressed his appreciation of the role of the churches as advocates for the weak, in particular the refugees and minorities,” said Rev. Antje Heider-Rottwilm, head of the Europe Department of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), after the meeting. “He showed his conviction that CEC will continue to submit itself against the tendencies towards exclusion and xenophobia.

“He was also convinced that the longstanding dialogue, both on the expert level as well as between the respective EU Presidencies, with CEC and the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) should continue. Beyond that, the dialogue with representatives of different religions should be put on a more permanent footing,” said Heider-Rottwilm.

The CEC also stressed the need for Turkey to implement human rights and religious freedom as absolute conditions for accession to the European Union. A report was also made on the ‘unacceptable conditions’ for Christian churches and other non-Islamic communities whose existences are ‘limited’ and ‘even threatened’ in the country.

Heider-Rottwilm said: “CEC is a reconciliation project in itself. When it was created more than forty years ago it united people on either side of the Iron Curtain.”