In Affaire Executife van de Moslims van Belgie et Autres c. Belgique, (ECHR, Feb. 13, 2024) [full opinion available only in French], the European Court of Human Rights, in a Chamber Judgment, held that Belgium had not violated Article 9 (freedom of religion) or Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights when two regions in the country eliminated the exemption permitting ritual slaughter of animals without stunning. The decrees had the effect of prohibiting Halal and kosher slaughter of animals in the two regions. An English language press release from the Court describes the Court's opinion, in part, as follows:
The Court found that there had been an interference with the applicants’ freedom of religion and that this was prescribed by legislation, namely the Flemish and Walloon decrees.
As to whether the interference pursued a legitimate aim, the Court observed that this was the first time that it had had to rule on the question whether the protection of animal welfare could be linked to one of the aims referred to in Article 9 of the Convention.
Article 9 of the Convention did not contain an explicit reference to the protection of animal welfare in the exhaustive list of legitimate aims that might justify an interference with the freedom to manifest one’s religion.
However, the Court considered that the protection of public morals, to which Article 9 of the Convention referred, could not be understood as being intended solely to protect human dignity in the sphere of inter-personal relations. The Convention was not indifferent to the living environment of individuals covered by its protection and in particular to animals, whose protection had already been considered by the Court. Accordingly, the Convention could not be interpreted as promoting the absolute upholding of the rights and freedoms it enshrined without regard to animal suffering.
Emphasising that the concept of “morals” was inherently evolutive, the Court did not see any reason to contradict the CJEU and the Constitutional Court, which had both found that the protection of animal welfare was an ethical value to which contemporary democratic societies attached growing importance....
The Court noted that both decrees were based on a scientific consensus that prior stunning was the optimum means of reducing the animal’s suffering at the time of slaughter. It saw no serious reason to call this finding into question.
The Court further observed that the Flemish and Walloon legislatures had sought a proportionate alternative to the obligation of prior stunning, as the decrees provided that, if the animals were slaughtered according to special methods required by religious rites, the stunning process used would be reversible, without causing the animal’s death....
