EHF attends a seminar organised by the Italian Union of Atheists Agnostics and Rationalists

EHF president Giulio Ercolessi took part in Florence in a seminar organised by EHF member organisation UAAR (the Italian Union of Atheists Agnostics and Rationalists) to mark the 30th anniversary of the ruling of the Italian Constitutional Court in which the principle of “Laicità” (secularity) was first recognised as one of the “supreme principles” of the Constitution (such that it could not even be cancelled by constitutional amendments).

Many of the most respected Italian Constitutional Law and Ecclesiastical Law scholars, together with representatives of religious minorities and UAAR, took part in the two days event, that was introduced by the Rector of Florence University.

In his address EHF president drew the attention of the participants to the progress and threats to the principle of impartiality and neutrality of public institutions, both at the EU and member states level, and to the need for a close scrutiny by qualified public opinion and academia to the present threats posed by the populist wave and the new fundamentalists, as well as by incompetent politicians, to the basic principles of constitutional and secular democracy.