By The European Times | Created at 2026-09-01 09:51:45 | Updated at 2026-09-05 05:09:19
3 days ago
The EU Special Envoy’s first 100 days highlight a universal right under growing pressure worldwide. They also raise a question closer to home: how open is the European Commission’s own dialogue with religious and belief communities?
Mairead McGuinness has marked her first 100 days as the European Union’s Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief outside the EU with a clear message: this right belongs to everyone. Her emphasis on listening, pluralism and equal protection comes at a critical moment internationally. It also offers Brussels an opportunity for reflection. Inside the European Commission, the Article 17 dialogue with religious and non-confessional organisations has been coordinated by the same official, Vincent Depaigne, since 2017. After almost nine years, questions over access, transparency and the concentration of practical gatekeeping power deserve serious attention.
“The freedom to believe, not to believe, or to change”
“It has been 100 days since I was appointed EU Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief outside the EU,” Mairead McGuinness wrote in a recent LinkedIn post.
Her definition of the right was deliberately broad.
FoRB, she wrote, is “the freedom to believe, not to believe, or to change what you believe,” and to live accordingly without fear of losing employment, family, liberty or life.
She also stressed that the right “protects the devout and the atheist equally”. Restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, she noted, rarely occur alone: freedom of expression, assembly and association, as well as the principle of non-discrimination, are often affected at the same time.
It is an important formulation because it moves the debate beyond the protection of institutions or established religions. Freedom of religion or belief is first and foremost an individual human right. It protects Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Scientologists, Hindus, Pagans, and members of other religious communities, but also atheists, humanists, converts, dissenters and people whose beliefs do not fit comfortably within traditional categories.
McGuinness said that during her first months she had met ministers, religious leaders, MEPs, ambassadors, international organisations, NGOs and others engaged in FoRB work.
“What comes through in every conversation is how quickly this right can erode and how devastating the consequences for victims can be,” she wrote.
Her assessment is sombre: extremism and polarisation are increasing; persecution based on religion or belief is growing; civic space is narrowing; and artificial intelligence and social media can give disinformation and hatred a reach that was previously impossible.
An international problem of enormous scale
The wider European Union shares that concern.
On 21 August 2026, the EU marked the International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief by warning that almost two thirds of the world’s population live in countries where serious abuses and violations of freedom of religion or belief occur.
“Millions of people suffer daily from intolerance, discrimination, hatred, hostility and violence because of their actual or perceived religion or belief, or lack thereof,” the EU said.
McGuinness therefore inherits a difficult portfolio.
The European Commission appointed her on 26 March 2026 as Special Envoy for the promotion of freedom of religion or belief outside the EU. She is attached to Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner, who also holds political responsibility for the Commission’s Article 17 dialogue.
Her international mandate and the Commission’s internal religious dialogue are different functions. But they meet around the same basic European principle: institutions should be prepared to listen to a diverse range of religious and belief communities, including voices outside the traditional establishment.
And this is where McGuinness’s experience becomes particularly interesting.
McGuinness knows Article 17 from the inside
Before joining the European Commission, McGuinness spent many years in the European Parliament. As a Vice-President and later First Vice-President, she was responsible for Parliament’s implementation of Article 17 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
A 2018 European Parliament agenda, for example, identified her explicitly as the Vice-President responsible for Article 17 dialogue with religious and non-confessional organisations.
Article 17 is short but significant. It requires the Union to respect the status of churches, religious communities, philosophical organisations and non-confessional bodies under national law.
Its third paragraph establishes something more:
“Recognising their identity and their specific contribution, the Union shall maintain an open, transparent and regular dialogue with these churches and organisations.”
Those three words — open, transparent and regular — should be the benchmark.
Today, the European Parliament implements the provision through Vice-President Antonella Sberna. Parliament says it organises several high-level conferences each year and describes them as open to its dialogue partners. Sberna herself has emphasised “openness to listening and understanding each other’s needs”.
The European Commission uses a different structure.
And that structure deserves closer examination.
The same Article 17 coordinator since 2017
The Commission continues to identify Vincent Depaigne as the Coordinator for Article 17 dialogue.
Depaigne has held that position since October 2017.
When his appointment was announced nearly nine years ago, the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, COMECE, welcomed what it called an opportunity for a “fresh start” based on transparency and mutual respect.
COMECE expressed the hope that “the next few years” would strengthen the coordinator’s role and ensure a genuinely regular dialogue through proactive exchanges.
Those “next few years” have become almost a decade.
Longevity is not in itself evidence of wrongdoing. Institutional knowledge can be valuable, particularly in a field as sensitive as relations between public authorities, religious organisations and non-confessional groups.
But Article 17 is fundamentally about access and dialogue.
When the same official occupies the coordinating position for nearly nine years, and when the system provides few visible checks on how access is managed, asking whether the structure needs renewal is legitimate.
Does one official become the gatekeeper?
Legally, Depaigne does not own or control Article 17.
The Treaty obligation belongs to the European Union. Political responsibility in the present Commission rests with Magnus Brunner. However, in practical terms, however, Depaigne occupies an exceptionally important position, and he knows it and prides himself with it.
The Commission publicly identifies him as the Coordinator for the dialogue and provides his contact details to organisations wishing to engage with the process. The coordinator participates in and chairs Article 17 exchanges and acts as the central administrative figure linking religious and non-confessional organisations with the Commission.
A February 2026 Article 17 meeting, for example, was publicly reported as having been chaired by Depaigne.
The difficulty is not that someone coordinates the process. Somebody clearly must.
The concern is what happens when coordination becomes, in practice, gatekeeping.
The Commission’s own Article 17 guidelines state that dialogue partners can be churches, religious associations or communities and philosophical or non-confessional organisations that are recognised or registered at national level and adhere to European values.
Crucially, the guidelines say there is “no official recognition or registration of interlocutors at a European level.”
In other words, Article 17 is not legally reserved for a closed club of organisations selected in Brussels.
Yet there is no equally visible procedure explaining how a qualifying organisation obtains access to the Commission dialogue when the coordinator has his own personal prejudices and does not engage with it.
There is no clearly published application process comparable to an administrative licensing procedure. There is no publicly stated deadline within which a request for dialogue must receive a substantive answer. There is no transparent scoring system determining which organisations receive meetings. And there is no obvious independent review mechanism through which an organisation can challenge prolonged exclusion from the Commission’s Article 17 process.
That creates a structural problem.
Depaigne does not have a legal monopoly over Article 17, but the system gives its coordinator something approaching a de facto administrative veto: if the principal gateway does not open, an qualified, representative and eligible organisation may struggle to identify another route into the Commission’s structured dialogue.
Concerns are not purely theoretical
The European Times has previously reported concerns over the management of Article 17 access.
That reporting included religious and belief organisations saying they had been unable to secure even introductory engagement with the coordinator, in some cases after years of attempts. It also recorded concern about requests being redirected towards institutions whose mandate did not correspond to the Commission’s internal Article 17 responsibilities.
The core issue is broader than any single organisation.
It is whether access to a Treaty-mandated dialogue can depend too heavily on the discretionary actions — or inaction — of one official.
The European Times also understands that figures familiar with Article 17 work inside the European Parliament have privately questioned aspects of the Commission’s handling of the dialogue and the concentration of practical access around one and always the same long-serving coordinator.
Such concerns have not developed into a formal institutional challenge, and the European Parliament manages its own Article 17 process separately, and much more openly.
But private criticism matters when it reflects a broader structural question already visible from the Commission’s own procedures.
Perhaps Article 17 needs renewal
After nearly nine years with the same coordinator, institutional renewal would not be an extraordinary proposition.
Rotation is normal in many sensitive public functions precisely because it reduces excessive dependence on personal networks and specially bad and prejudiced habits.
A renewed Article 17 structure could also go much further than simply changing the person occupying the office.
The Commission could establish transparent eligibility and participation criteria, publish reasonable response deadlines, provide explanations when requests for dialogue are declined and create a simple review procedure for organisations that believe they have been unfairly excluded.
It could publish annual information on which organisations participated in Article 17 activities and broaden working-level dialogue beyond the relatively familiar organisations that repeatedly appear around Brussels institutions.
Periodic rotation of the coordinator could form part of the same approach.
Such measures would not weaken Article 17. They would strengthen both the dialogue and the officials responsible for administering it by making accusations of favouritism or arbitrary exclusion easier to examine objectively.
The European Ombudsman has already dealt with questions surrounding Article 17 access in the past. In a case involving the European Humanist Federation, the Ombudsman criticised part of the Commission’s reasoning for refusing a proposed dialogue seminar and invited the Commission to clarify its practices and rules. The Commission subsequently developed its Article 17 guidelines.
The principle is therefore established: administrative discretion in Article 17 dialogue is a legitimate subject of scrutiny.
Listening is part of the right, back to McGuinness
This brings the discussion back to McGuinness.
Her 100-day message is compelling precisely because it presents freedom of religion or belief as something wider than diplomatic declarations.
She has spent her first months meeting people, not everyone, but at least some.
Ministers, ambassadors, MEPs and international institutions are part of that process. But so are NGOs, religious leaders and civil-society advocates — including people whose experiences may otherwise struggle to reach European decision-makers.
Listening does not require agreement.
Nor should Article 17 guarantee every organisation a seat at every single high-level conference (but at least some). Institutions need workable formats, relevant agendas and equali possibilities of participation and representation.
An open dialogue must provide a genuine route through which eligible organisations can be heard.
That is particularly important for minority faiths and less institutionally established belief communities. Major churches and longstanding Brussels organisations already possess established networks, permanent representatives and regular access to EU institutions and Commissioners of all sorts. Smaller or newer communities are the ones most dependent on the fairness of institutional procedures.
An Article 17 system should therefore be especially careful not to turn familiarity into an unofficial qualification for participation.
McGuinness offers an opportunity
McGuinness does not supervise Vincent Depaigne, and her Special Envoy mandate concerns freedom of religion or belief outside the European Union. But Depaigne seems to have beengiven the control of who does access to her. Therefore the institutional proximity is striking.
Both McGuinness and the Article 17 dialogue are attached politically to Commissioner Magnus Brunner (access to whom is also controlled by Depaigne). McGuinness herself previously managed Article 17 dialogue inside the European Parliament. She understands the Treaty provision, the organisations involved and the importance of giving different convictions access to European institutions.
Her arrival therefore offers an opportunity for a broader conversation.
The EU should be ambitious in defending people persecuted for their beliefs around the world. The need could hardly be greater.
But the strength of European human-rights diplomacy also depends on credibility.
When Europe asks governments elsewhere to engage with minority communities, protect dissenting beliefs and allow civil society to participate openly, the same culture of access should be visible in Brussels.
McGuinness’s first 100 days have put freedom of religion or belief firmly back on the European agenda.
Perhaps they should also begin another discussion: after nearly nine years under the same Article 17 coordinator, is it time for the Commission to renew not only the dialogue’s personalities, but also the rules governing who gets through the door?
An Article 17 process worthy of its Treaty language should make the answer to that question transparent.
