L'assistance légistique internationale relative aux régimes des cultes en Europe : vers une nouvelle source de droit : analyse des avis et recommandations de la Commissionpour la démocratie par le droit (Conseil de l’Europe), et du Bureau des Institutions Démocratiques et des Droits de l’Homme (au sein de l’OSCE) (1990-2015)

Since the end of the 1990ties, legislators of many States, essentially of Eastern Europe and ex-USSR, requested the assistance of the Commission for Democracy through Law – Venice Commission – and of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights – ODIHR – in order to draft their Laws on Freedom of Religion or Belief and on relations towards religions. Thereby, these two institutions wrote about thirty opinions, each of them commenting a draftlaw according to the criteria of the International Standards of Human Rights, among which the Right to Freedom of Religion or Belief. From their experiences, they edited guidelines (in 2004 and in 2014) directing any legislator wishing to draft a law on Freedom of Religion or Belief conformingly to the Human Rights. This study focuses on the right of religious or belief communities to legal status – especially legal personality –, other privileges and the conditions to obtain them, according to the commented draftlaws. After analysing the working modalities of the legislative assistance by the Venice Commission and the ODIHR, this study discovers and presents the pecularities of the implementation of the International Standards by these institutions to stipulations of draftlaws concerning religions or beliefs, the influence of their work on national legislations and their indirect impact on the International Standards themselves. The background question of this study permits us to state that the support to the right to Freedom of Religion or Belief by Venice Commission and ODIHR assistance to the national legislators drafting of laws is not an imperialism of Western worldviews as it promotes actually the official goals of these instances, i.e. democracy, peace and human rights, thus the manifestation and expression of any worldview, religion or belief in the usual limits of the respect of others. In order to answer that question, this study took into account the religious and cultural context of the States concerned by international legislative assistance, checking on the one hand its link or distance with the international standard of freedom or belief and on the other hand the corelation between a State’s history of religions-State relations and its desire or necessity to request international assistance to draft laws on freedom of religion or belief respectuous of international standards.