ABSTRACT

The proliferation of religious accommodation’s instances in private labour relations highlights the complexity of the interactions between contractual autonomy and religious freedom in the implementation of anti-discrimination legislation.

In the search for a reasonable balance between the parties’ spheres of self-determination, the negotiating source seems to play a significant role. In fact, company regulations and organisational practices that take into account the religious identity of the employee detect the relationship of mutual functionality that may exist between the principle of private economic initiative and the principle of non-discrimination, without the one being considered the limit of the other.

There are various problem profiles that arise in cases where contractual autonomy is manifested through acts of disposition of the religious freedom of the worker, such as to intercept the full exercise thereof. In the succession of the interpretative orientations, the solution proposed by the European Judges is of considerable interest. In outlining the conditions under which the balance may be leaning in favour of entrepreneurial needs, they believe that the religious freedom of workers cannot be said to be injured if the policy of neutrality is pursued in a coherent, systematic and undifferentiated way with reference to any belief.