Nine Belgian citizens of the Jewish faith, including the Chief Rabbi of Brussels, Albert Guigui, have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) once morest the ban on ritual slaughter in Belgiumtheir attorney said in a statement on Tuesday.
They thus join the Executive of the Muslims of Belgium (EMB) and the Coordinating Council of Islamic Institutions of Belgium (CIB), which announced last December that they were challenging the Walloon (July 2017) and Flemish (October 2018) bans before the ECHR. slaughter of animals without stunning.
At the end of September 2021, the Belgian Constitutional Court rejected appeals once morest these regional decrees, which require the stunning of animals before slaughter in order to reduce animal suffering.
Serious violation of freedom of religion
The nine applicants argue before the European Court that the pure and simple prohibition of any slaughter not preceded by stunning “seriously infringes their freedom of religion“, underlines their lawyer Patrice Spinosi.
She “directly clashes with the right to observe food precepts dictated by religion“, insists the lawyer, who invokes a judgment of the ECHR handed down in 2000 according to which ritual slaughter “represents an essential element of the practice of the Jewish religion“.
“Neither the letter nor the spirit of the European Convention on Human Rights admits the restriction of such a fundamental dimension of freedom of religion in the name of so-called +animal welfare+“, insists Mr. Spinosi, assuring that “traditional Jewish methods of ritual slaughter minimize animal suffering“.
If the case is retained by the ECHR, which sits in Strasbourg (eastern France), it might render its judgment “within 2 to 3 years“, he specifies.
Seized for an opinion on this question by the Belgian Constitutional Court, the Court of Justice of the European Union, which sits in Luxembourg, considered in December 2020 that Flemish legislation does not “don’t misunderstand“the freedom of Jewish and Muslim believers.
It’s regarding “ensure a fair balance between the importance attached to animal welfare and the freedom of Jewish and Muslim believers to manifest their religion“, she argued.
The debate is also ongoing in the Brussels Region. At the initiative of MP Jonathan de Patoul (DéFI), the amarante formation, Groen and the Open Vld tabled in the Brussels parliament a proposal for an ordinance aimed at prohibiting the slaughter of animals without stunning, following the failure of a draft order to the Brussels government, where the PS was particularly reluctant.
