Martine Cerf on Laïcité, Equality, and Article 17: Defending Freedom of Conscience in Europe
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/02/22
Martine Cerf is Vice-President of EGALE (Égalité Laïcité Europe), a Paris-based association advancing freedom of conscience, equality, and secularism across France and the European sphere. She previously directed communication and training firms in France and Belgium, then helped build EGALE in the early 2000s. Cerf co-directed the Dictionnaire de la laïcité with Marc Horwitz; it won the Prix de l’initiative laïque in 2012. She has participated in high-level dialogues with nonconfessional leaders since 2012. Her work links laïcité to human rights, gender equality, and democracy, emphasizing the separation between religious organizations and the state, neutral public institutions, and respectful pluralism in a political climate.
In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen speaks with Martine Cerf, Vice-President of EGALE (Égalité Laïcité Europe), about laïcité as a daily safeguard for freedom of thought, conscience, and religion—including the right to have none. Cerf argues that neutrality is the state’s equal-treatment engine, and warns that religious lobbying still distorts policy, citing France’s stalled assisted-dying debate. Across the EU, she highlights anomalies: selective subsidies, church labour-law exemptions, and established churches. She critiques Article 17 dialogue for institutionalizing lobbying, urges stronger nonconfessional representation, and emphasizes education and training to defend pluralism without stigmatizing non-believers.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What does “laïcité” protect in everyday life?
Martine Cerf: Secularism protects everyone’s freedom of conscience, i.e., the freedom to choose one’s beliefs or non-beliefs, one’s religion, and to change them. It also protects everyone’s freedom to practice their religion, in accordance with public order. Religions are free to organize themselves as they wish.
It also protects equality among individuals, as the neutral state treats everyone equally regardless of religion or philosophical beliefs.
Jacobsen: EGALE frames secularism as inseparable from equality. Where do you see the sharpest policy gaps in France and in the EU?
Cerf: In France, politicians still tend to follow the recommendations of religious groups on critical social issues, which is inconsistent with the principle of secularism. We can see the consequences of this today in the difficulty we are having in passing a law that would allow anyone to receive assistance in dying at the end of their life if they request it, because religious leaders are opposed to it, even though the vast majority of citizens want this new freedom.
In the European Union, member states have committed to respecting citizens’ freedom of conscience and generally do so quite well. But there are anomalies, such as subsidies allocated to specific religions and not to others, as in Spain. In Germany, where churches are very involved in social services such as hospitals, they have obtained exemptions from labour law: they can require their employees to live in accordance with their morals, which is a clear interference in people’s private lives. In Denmark, Lutheranism is the state religion, which automatically creates a status that is not entirely equal between citizens who profess it and others.
Jacobsen: What strategies for defending institutional neutrality at the European level do so without stigmatizing believers?
Cerf: We have our work cut out for us to avoid stigmatizing non-believers!
European institutions are neutral and proud of it. But they too often claim that they only have to defend “religious freedom,” which means that the freedoms of those who have no religion are regularly overlooked. We must constantly remind them that they must protect “freedom of thought, conscience, and religion” for all, as stated in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
Jacobsen: You have attended high-level meetings throughout the 2020s. What struck you about this philosophical and nonconfessional high-level meeting centred on Article 17?
Cerf: What struck me at first was the contempt that some politicians showed for our associations, while they were full of deference for religious leaders. We have made positive progress on this point. But this is not a foregone conclusion, and we must remain vigilant.
What strikes me today is the quality of the relationships we have built and the willingness to listen we encounter, which has led to the adoption of some of our recommendations.
Jacobsen: How do high-level meetings like these lead to change in governance regarding gender equality, and so on, in concrete outcomes? There can be contexts in which some philosophies and nonconfessional statuses can be interpreted to restrict the rights of women, while in other interpretations this never happens.
Cerf: This is not a criticism that can be levelled at European institutions today. They are very concerned about gender equality. It is at the level of citizens’ attitudes and Member States’ governance that action is needed on these issues. We can draw our interlocutors’ attention to a serious shortcoming we have observed in a Member State, for example.
Jacobsen: Do nonconfessional participants enter Article 17 dialogues on equal footing with religious representatives?
Cerf: Not always. We have to be very vigilant to ensure we are represented, and, in any case, there are fewer of us than there are representatives of religious groups. Senior leaders tend to be less involved with non-religious people and often send representatives to meetings, while they always attend meetings with spiritual leaders.
Parliament has made commendable efforts to ensure that non-religious people are always represented at round tables and that Article 17 meetings are joint meetings.
Jacobsen: If you could reform the Article 17 process, what would you change?
Cerf: I would remove it. This institutional dialogue perpetuates a fundamental error of analysis, which is to think that churches represent the believers or that we speak for those who have no religion. In reality, each partner is only authorized to speak on behalf of its own organization, not on behalf of thousands or millions of believers or non-believing citizens.
This dialogue institutionalizes lobbying, in which many partners oppose the freedoms won by citizens (in particular, abortion, same-sex marriage, end-of-life care, etc.) and take advantage of it to make their voices heard and demand more European subsidies.
Jacobsen: What are EGALE’s top priorities for the next 12–24 months, either internal strategy or external partnership building?
Cerf: Our priorities focus on training in secularism. The challenge is to counter the harmful actions of fanatical groups seeking to divide society.
We work in high schools in the Île-de-France region, which includes Paris, to help students understand what caricatures are and how they relate to freedom of expression and democracy. This is particularly important in a context where teachers are being murdered or attacked for trying to teach this.
We organize training courses for adults, conferences, symposiums, and secular cafés where citizens discuss the values of our society, which are European values. In the current geopolitical context, it seems essential to understand these values and bring them to life concretely.
We work with politicians to ensure that they respect secularism, as they set an example.
We aim to expand the European Secular Network, founded in 2024, which also participates in the Article 17 dialogue.
Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Martine.
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