Main Trends in the EU Member-States Attitude Towards Religion

The article is devoted to the analysis of the collective study led by G. Robbers "State and Church in the European Union" third edition (2019). This work includes a clearly structured overview of state policy in the field of religion and law in all the member States of the European Union (EU). The main directions of development of state-legal relations with the religious communities in the EU are presented in the book drawing examples of specific situations and cases. The authors analyze the materials of the study in terms of three main systems (models) of the States' attitude towards religion: an integrative model (including the "state church"), a separation model, and a cooperative model. Based on the comparison of the content of the essays included in the book, the authors identify the main trends in State-Church relations in the EU and note the dynamics of scientific reflection on this area. The most significant processes identified by European scholars include: (1) a steady decrease in the number of Christian churches followers and the number of communities, (2) the growing role of Islam, which becoms the dominant factor in European social and political processes, (3) the desire to adapt the EU countries' main population cultural traditions to new social conditions, weighed down by the consequences of the migration crisis.