In this article, the author examines the systems of state regulation of religion in Western Europe. In the confessional system of the state, often adopted by countries of Lutheran religious tradition and orthodox Christianity, the option is to assume an official religion beneficiary of public policies and symbolic arrangements. On the other hand, the separation regimes consists of arrangements of demarcation more rigid or more flexible of the boundaries of performance between states and religions. The French and the German models are examples of these arrangements, respectively. The author considers that currently there is a double movement of de-confessionalization in some countries and in other re-association, which would produce a certain homogeneity towards a European system of regulation of belief, characterized by a middle position between the rigid separatism and the confessionalism non-egalitarian, manily anchored in a flexible regime of separation.
laicism; secularism; Western Europe