EU flags fly in front of the European Commission headquarters in Brussels.
‘’The European Union does not protect its religious minorities anymore,’’ said Yohan Benizri, president of CCOJB, the umbrella group representing Jewish organisations in Belgium, in a reaction to the ruling delivered by the European Court of Justice allowing member states to go as far as outlawing religious slaughter in an approved slaughterhouse.
The Court was responding to the question on a preliminary ruling by the Belgian regions of Flanders and Wallonia which have banned religious ritual slaughter by requiring the prior stunning of the animals thus making EU-law based religious slaughter exception meaningless.