SInce its outbreak the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on European legal frameworks, giving rise to new institutional challenges. Member States have enforced special measures to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, imposing to varying degrees restrictions on the freedom of movement, freedom of assembly and of association, the right to education, and so on. Among them, the exercise of religious freedom has suffered unparalleled restrictions since the Second World War. However just few European states resorted to the mechanism of derogation provided under article 15 ECHR. Other states adopted analogue measures of the derogating states, without resorting to article 15.The aim of the present paper is to offer a comparative survey of restrictive measures adopted in different juridical contexts and affecting the exercise of religious freedom to different degrees. and it offers the opportunity to provide some preliminary (but not exhaustive) comparative reflections. Through “the prism of the pandemic health crisis” the present analysis focuses on various approaches with regard to the balancing of religious freedom with public health, in order to assess the rise of an “European standard” or individual state responses, the role played by the principle of state neutrality, the influence of ECtHR case law and of its standards of review I(i.e. necessity, proportionality), the impact of the COVID-19 health crisis on different national patterns of management of religious diversity, taking into account that different cEuropean countries are undergoing important legal changes relating to religious freedom
