Relationship of the Czech Catholic Community to the European Union

The bachelor thesis builds on the academic debate on the relationship between religion and politics and explores the hitherto unexplored attitude of the Czech Catholic milieu towards the European Union, through the prism of views on EU migration policy. Using the method of media discourse analysis, the attitudes of seven prominent figures in the Czech Catholic milieu and their positions on the issue of migration and the related EU response are examined during the migration crisis between 2015 and 2017. The analysed attitudes are categorised as belonging to the established attitudes concerning European integration - Euroscepticism and Euro-optimism. The results show a balanced representation of both trends, with a slight predominance of Euroscepticism. The Czech Catholic milieu thus reflected the divisions within Czech society on several issues related to the EU and migration. Therefore, the religious beliefs of the Catholics surveyed do not represent a unifying factor in political views on the EU and the Czech Catholic environment does not form a coherent ideological stream Keywords The Catholic church; European union; migration crisis; refugees; Czech Catholic milie