On Thursday, 10 September, the advocate general proposed that the Court of Justice of the European Union should rule that the Flemish law prohibiting the slaughter of animals without stunning, including particular methods of slaughter prescribed by religious rites, is not permitted under EU law (Case C-336/19).
In his Opinion, Advocate General Gerard Hogan also points out that Member States may adopt stricter rules than those contained in EU law. However, the advocate general judges that the prescribed derogation in favour of religious rites must be respected.
He proposes that the court “should find that Member States are not permitted to adopt rules which provide, on the one hand, for a prohibition of the slaughter of animals without stunning that also applies to the slaughter carried out in the context of a religious rite and, on the other hand, for an alternative stunning procedure for the slaughter carried out in the context of a religious rite, based on reversible stunning and on condition that the stunning should not result in the death of the animal”.
More concretely, Member States may adopt stricter rules than those contained in EU law, but he stresses that the derogation prescribed in favour of religious rites must be respected.
“There is [...] no avoiding the fact that the preservation of the religious rites of animal slaughter often sits uneasily with modern conceptions of animal welfare. The [...] derogation is, nevertheless, a policy choice which the EU legislature was certainly entitled to take,” explains the advocate general. “It follows that this Court cannot allow this specific policy choice to be hollowed out by individual Member States taking specific action in the name of animal welfare which would have the substantive effect of nullifying the derogation in favour of certain religious adherents,” he concludes.
The Constitutional Court of Belgium referred the case to the Court [of Justice of the European Union] after several Jewish and Muslim associations contested a decree of the Flemish Region dated July 2017 regarding permitted methods of slaughtering animals. This text had the effect of prohibiting the slaughtering of animals according to traditional Jewish and Muslim rites and requiring that such animals be stunned prior to slaughter in order to reduce their suffering. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)