Natalia Vlas (Babes-Bolyai University)  has posted The Law on Religious Freedom: An Expression of Romanian Democracy? . The abstract follows.

This paper aims to analyze the place of religion in the Romanian society and politics, by focusing specifically on the process of readjusting religious freedom in Romania after 1990. Although the regulation of religious life in accordance with international human rights principles was considered one of the cornerstones of the Romanian democracy, the replacement of the communist legal framework with a new one took more than 17 years and was accompanied by numerous tensions among the religious actors themselves, state institutions and civil society organizations. The analysis of the state of religious freedom two decades after the fall of the communism in Romania reveals ambivalent developments. Despite some undeniable signs of progress, there are still significant areas that require improvement. The most problematic aspects are the maintenance of the two-tier system and the financial dependence of the culte on the state.