Mark Hill's collection on religion and discrimination law in the European Union (the proceedings of the European Consortium for Church and State Research's 23rd Congress, in 2011) contains a comprehensive review of the protection from religious discrimination across the European Union, comparing the legal provisions in different states, governed by both their individual domestic laws and the laws of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and EU law, which they share in common. The book consists largely of reports on the laws of the countries represented on the Consortium, whose writers followed a common framework for reporting on their domestic law. The collection begins and ends with papers examining the historical, cultural and social background to these laws, as well as examining the legal frameworks of Articles 9 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) protecting religious freedom, and the EU Equality Directive 2000/78 prohibiting religious discrimination.

The central chapters set out member states' laws governing religious freedom and religious discrimination, and provide a very useful reference tool, enabling comparisons to be made between the different states of Europe. They illustrate time and again the vast range of settlements that have been reached by states in governing their relationships with religion. All the states guarantee religious freedom and equality, but the political settlements reached still vary, from French laïcité to states with established churches (the UK, Denmark), constitutions referring to religion (Ireland, Greece) and states with constitutional commitments to religious neutrality but strong links with the Roman Catholic Church (Italy, Spain). The position in eastern European states varies again, with their more recent histories of state intolerance of religion followed by relatively recent constitutional changes, usually requiring rapid conformity to western European norms to facilitate accession to the EU. Equally the levels of religious practice and the variety of religious groupings within states vary hugely.

The reports on states include a section on case law, and similar stories emerge in different jurisdictions. Examples of similar-fact cases in the different states include cases on how to deal with workers wearing headscarves (the UK, Denmark and Germany), and cases on religious objections to performing same-sex civil partnership ceremonies (the UK and the Netherlands). The answers reached by the courts vary, and this leads to a recurrent theme in the book: that, while there is a common legal framework based on EU law and the ECHR, and common acceptance of the constitutional principle of religious freedom and equality, consensus on how to deal with the practical outworking of these rights and freedoms remains elusive. A constant theme in all the reports is one of compromise being sought between the different interests at stake.

As a reference work for comparing the protection of religious freedom and equality across Europe, the core of descriptive chapters in this book is certainly very valuable, but additional value is added to the work by the thoughtful opening and closing chapters, which are more discursive in nature. In his introduction, Sir Nicolas Bratza comments on the need for the ECtHR to strike a balance between individual rights and the very different constitutional traditions of European states. He traces the treatment of religious rights in the ECtHR, particularly in cases of conscientious objection, religious dress codes and conflicts of rights, and concludes that the Court has been strong and bold in the protection of collective rights against the state but less bold in securing individual rights, particularly where these conflict with other rights and public interests.

Lisbet Christoffersen, in her short chapter on the historical, cultural and social background to the religious discrimination laws, notes the very different approaches to tolerance and equality across Europe. She remarks that it remains unclear whether there is a common understanding of equality and non-discrimination in Europe, noting recent changes in religious thinking towards gender and sexual orientation equality, both the development of liberal thinking and the more recent resurgence of more conservative types of Christianity, which remain hostile to these developments. Her chapter raises the question of what equality really means. Does it involve including or excluding differences, and how do we strike a balance between commonality and difference? These fundamental questions are set in the context of the hugely different historical paths travelled by the different European states. In this context, it is hardly surprising that the search for an appropriate legal response to religious freedom and equality has given rise to such serious and divisive debate in Europe. Yet, as Christoffersen notes, concrete cases arise of religious discrimination, and these fundamental issues do have to be addressed by the courts if case law is to develop with any coherence.

Concluding chapters on both the ECtHR and the EU Equality Directive by Jean Duffar and Michał Rynkowski highlight the paradoxes in this issue. Rynkowski points out the differences between states: he includes a table tracing the different drafts of the key religious exemption provisions of Article 4(2) of Directive 2000/78, and describes the debates in the European Parliament as ‘Europe in a nutshell’, illustrating the divides in approach to Church–state relations between groups such as the Christian Democrats on the one hand and French secularists on the other. Duffar, in his review of the ECtHR and the Council of Europe highlights the convergence in the approach of the courts, with their reliance on dialogue and compromise. In his final chapter, Norman Doe reflects that further fundamental questions remain to be explored: for example, how far is religious freedom curtailed by religious discrimination? And, perhaps most fundamentally, how does religious equality fit within broader concepts of justice?

Hill's edited collection creates a very valuable addition to the literature on law and religion. It juxtaposes descriptive reports on the position of individual states, with wider contextual questions, which serve as a reminder to the reader of why the topic remains so fascinating to so many, a point on which readers of this Journal no doubt need no persuasion.