In Romania, religion is legally an elective subject in state schools. Parents and students must actively ask to be enrolled — and they have the right to withdraw at any time. Yet in practice, many schools continue to treat the subject as compulsory, pressuring families into participation and creating bureaucratic obstacles for those who wish to opt out.
To address this gap between law and lived reality, ASUR (The Romanian Secular-Humanist Association), a member of Humanists International — launched oradereligie.info. The platform offers clear legal explanations of parents’ and students’ rights, ready-to-use model letters for opting out, and a direct counseling option for families facing institutional pressure.
“One of the most basic things is not forcing a child to adopt beliefs they haven’t chosen for themselves.” said Toma Pătrașcu, President of ASUR. ”For over a decade, ASUR has been receiving messages from parents who didn’t know they could opt out, or who tried and hit a wall. This platform is our answer to all of them. Too many families still don’t know the law is on their side — and too many schools make it deliberately hard for them to exercise that right. This platform has been a long time coming and we hope it will prove useful for all those parents and students who need it.”
The platform is entirely free and designed to be accessible to anyone — parents unfamiliar with the legal system, students asserting their own rights, and teachers or school principals seeking clarity.
For Dragoș Hrițcu, youth worker and project assistant for the platform, the work carries personal as well as professional meaning. “As a philosophy student, questions about freedom of conscience and the role of religion in public institutions are ones I think about seriously,” he said. “Being able to contribute something concrete – a tool that actually helps people exercise rights they already have – is exactly the kind of work I wanted to do.”
The launch comes at a politically significant moment. Romania’s Ministry of Education recently opened a public consultation on the structure of the 2030 National Baccalaureate, which proposes including religion as an optional exam subject. ASUR has submitted a formal position opposing this proposal, arguing that religion in its current confessional form — taught differently by denomination, assessed using explicitly permissive grading norms, and not studied by all students — does not meet the academic standards required of a national certification exam.
The platform is available at oradereligie.info. Families seeking advice on specific situations can contact ASUR directly through the platform.
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