Did Pastafarians Lose in Strasbourg, After All?

Abstract

In the late 2021, the European Court of Human Rights rejected as inadmissible the application lodged by a person affiliated with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The Court argued that ‘Pastafarianism’, due to its purely satirical character, cannot be considered to be a religion or belief within the sense of Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights. This ruling appears to be convincingly justified. However, some aspects of the reasoning offered in the body of the decision might raise concerns as to the Court’s willingness to adhere to its earlier standards, since the conclusion was reached at the price of overstretching the well-established view on the incompatibility of the state’s duty of neutrality with any power to assess the legitimacy of religious beliefs or the ways in which they are expressed.