Promoting an Anti-EU Agenda? The Role of Churches and Religious Groups as Illiberal Contenders in EU Accession Candidates

In a resolution of June 2023, the European Parliament has stressed its concerns regarding the attempts of the Serbian Orthodox Church - not only in Serbia, but also in Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina - to contribute to the promotion of an anti-EU agenda, while at the same framing Russia as a protector of true Serbian values. Various reports highlight its close alliance to and support of extremist groups, like Nasi, the People’s Patrol or the Balkan Cossack Army. Orthodoxy is purported as crucial for Serbian national revival, but these values are deemed under attack by a "West", personified by the far left, liberals, globalism, LGBTQ activists, gender fanatics, and most prominently the European Union. Religious ideas not only connect to understandings of tradition and national(ist) heritage, but are important for processes of inclusion, exclusion, and mobilisation, in particular in settings of social conflict, crises and perceived civilizational confrontations. These narratives easily team up with radical conservatives’ propositions to free Europe from the moral, social and economic decay liberal democracy has wrought in Europe and to re-build a "different Europe", based on national sovereignty, traditional and religious values, as highlighted at a "cross-continental conservative congress" held in Belgrade in November 2023. Religiously determined "knowledges of belonging" not only frame imagined communities, but also imagined geographies. This challenges the EU’s attempts to condition liberal transformation during accession processes and raises the question about the role of churches and religious institutions in propagating "illiberal" concepts of society. This paper is interested in churches and religious groups as contestants of EU liberalism (understood as neutrality towards normative concepts of "the good life" and consequently secularity) in EU accession candidates. It asks it asks about their contribution to the various "frontlines of contestations", how they assign meaning to European demands and offers, what strategies they adopt, how identities, ideas and interests are mobilised and which coalitions they build. By building on case studies from Serbia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Georgia, and Ukraine, it does not limit itself to the role of the orthodox church but broadens the perspective to a variety of religious groups, including Islam. The paper is part of a larger research project, which maps varieties of contestation and local patterns of illiberalism, defined as rejection (refusal to engage), objection (evoking protest), de-legitimation (adoption of antagonistic positions) and reframing (assigning of new meaning) of the EU(ropean) liberal project in its immediate vicinity (Western Balkan and Eastern Partnership countries). The paper hopes to contribute to discussions of the contribution of religious revival to the contestation of (European) liberal democracy and the conservative re-definition of democracy, the linkages between churches and civil society, but also EU perspectives to accommodate or confront religious demands.