Positions
This catalogue answers a narrow question: what does Restore Europe hold on this issue? It does not replace the manifesto. The manifesto sets out the worldview; this sets out searchable, topic-by-topic positions.
Where Catholic moral teaching is clear, Restore Europe generally adopts it as the moral baseline, and states civil-law implementation separately. One departure is recorded explicitly: on capital punishment Restore Europe takes the older traditional allowance for exceptional cases rather than the contemporary abolitionist position.
The catalogue distinguishes the constitutional order Restore Europe seeks from European law as it currently stands. Several positions — on nationality, on deprivation of citizenship, on speech, on the public standing of religion and on capital punishment — would require constitutional or treaty change before they could be enacted in particular European states. Where that is so, the entry says it.
Version 0.2 settles the questions version 0.1 had left open: the European institutional relationship, asylum, deportation, wages, taxation, pensions, housing, labour representation, digital identity and currency, biometric surveillance, genetic engineering, sentencing, the energy mix and every standing question of foreign policy. Where a v0.2 formulation revised an earlier entry, the newer text governs.
Every question in this catalogue carries a position. Entries marked Derived follow the direction of the manifesto without their implementation being fixed, and several name the legal or treaty change they would require. Positions are revised as the movement decides; the version and date above say which text you are reading.
Showing all 89 positions.
I
The place of religion in public life, and the moral questions law cannot avoid.
Restore Europe supports formal constitutional recognition of Catholicism as the principal public religion, and rejects the claim that the state can be morally or religiously neutral.
Restore Europe holds that human life must be protected from conception, and that elective direct abortion should be prohibited.
Restore Europe opposes direct euthanasia and assisted suicide, supports palliative care, and allows the refusal of extraordinary or disproportionate treatment.
Restore Europe recognizes civil marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and centres family law on the natural family.
Restore Europe opposes artificial contraception and rejects a public culture that treats permanent avoidance of fertility as the normal foundation of sexual life, without criminalizing private adult possession.
Restore Europe supports the complete legal prohibition of pornography.
Restore Europe supports the complete legal prohibition of prostitution and its commercial facilitation, with exit support for those leaving it.
Restore Europe supports keeping recreational narcotics, including recreational cannabis, illegal, with heavier penalties for traffickers than for dependent users.
Alcohol remains lawful for adults in moderate use. Restore Europe opposes drunkenness, abuse and conduct that harms others.
Gambling may remain lawful in limited adult forms, strictly regulated against addiction, fraud and exploitation.
Unbelief, criticism and theological argument remain lawful. Deliberate desecration of the sacred may be prohibited.
II
The household as the first institution, and what public policy owes it.
The family formed around marriage is the fundamental social institution, and public policy should make marriage and child-rearing materially realistic.
Europe should answer demographic decline by making family formation viable for its own population rather than by permanent mass immigration.
Sunday should be restored as the common day of worship, family and rest, with ordinary commercial activity substantially restricted.
A safety net directed primarily at citizens, families and those genuinely unable to support themselves, expressing solidarity without becoming permanent avoidable dependency.
III
Membership of a political community, and the European order between nations.
The nation is an intergenerational historical community, and European peoples have a legitimate interest in maintaining cultural and historical continuity.
Immigration should be limited to levels compatible with genuine integration, social stability, infrastructure capacity and demographic continuity.
Asylum is protection from genuine persecution or serious danger, not a general mechanism for choosing a preferred country of settlement.
Protection should facilitate self-sufficiency rather than permanent welfare dependency.
A non-citizen convicted of a qualifying serious criminal offence should ordinarily lose the right to remain and receive a permanent re-entry ban.
Citizenship is membership of a historical political community rather than a function of residence, and Restore Europe rejects automatic territorial birthright citizenship as a general rule.
The normal route requires around fifteen years of lawful residence before an application may be made, with demanding assimilation requirements.
Documented national descent may justify a substantially faster restoration route than ordinary naturalization.
Naturalized citizens should wait a further four years after naturalization before receiving full voting rights.
The highest offices of the nation are reserved for citizens with a birth, descent and historical connection to the country rather than acquired citizenship alone.
Dual citizenship between European countries is generally accepted; non-European citizens naturalizing into a European nation would be expected to renounce their former citizenship.
Naturalized citizenship may be revoked judicially in exceptionally serious cases such as fraudulent naturalization, treason or terrorism.
Europe should be a civilizational community of sovereign nations, not a centralized post-national state.
Restore Europe supports fundamental reform of the European Union into a limited framework for cooperation among sovereign European nations, with most political powers returned to the member states.
IV
Ownership, enterprise, credit and the dignity of labour.
Restore Europe rejects both unrestricted capitalism and centralized socialism. Its economic ideal is distributist in ownership and corporatist in organization.
Property is a source of independence and responsibility. The answer to concentration is wider ownership, not the abolition of property.
Corporations are legitimate instruments but remain subordinate to the common good, and concentrated corporate power may be restrained.
Workers, employers, craftsmen, farmers and professions should participate in sectoral institutions setting standards, apprenticeships and labour conditions.
Finance should serve productive activity. Legitimate lending and reasonable return are accepted; exploitative interest and debt traps are not.
Housing should principally serve habitation and community rather than function as an endlessly appreciating financial asset.
Work has dignity but is not the purpose of human existence. Economic progress should increase security, leisure and command over one's own life.
Every worker is entitled to a just wage sufficient for a dignified life and the reasonable support of a family.
Taxation is legitimate for the common good but should be fair, family-sensitive, non-confiscatory and compatible with broad ownership, productive work and subsidiarity.
A mixed pension system should combine basic old-age security with occupational provision, personal savings, family property and intergenerational responsibility.
Housing should principally serve habitation and community, with policy aimed at widespread family ownership rather than permanent financial extraction.
Workers may organize independently, while labour relations should move toward a corporatist system of permanent sectoral institutions representing workers, employers and professions.
V
What may be built, what should be deployed, and what must remain within reach.
Technological development is not synonymous with human progress, and should be judged by its effects on autonomy, family, community and work.
AI may be used as a tool but should not displace human judgment merely because automation is technically possible or economically efficient.
Automation may remove genuinely degrading labour, but removing human participation from productive activity is not an unquestioned good.
Citizens should retain meaningful access to physical money and to face-to-face public services.
Citizens should retain meaningful access to repairable products, against unnecessary disposability and technological lock-in.
Citizens should retain meaningful private spaces free from permanent surveillance, with the detailed rules not yet settled.
Children should receive strong legal protection from social-media systems designed to maximize compulsive attention and psychological dependence.
Digital identification may exist as an optional convenience, but ordinary civic participation must not require compulsory digital-only identity.
A CBDC must not replace physical cash or become a compulsory, programmable system of transaction surveillance.
Lawful cryptocurrency ownership and transfer should remain permitted, while fraud, theft and abusive centralized custody remain regulated.
Permanent or indiscriminate facial-recognition surveillance of the general population should be prohibited.
Indiscriminate permanent retention of the communications metadata of the entire population should be rejected.
Therapeutic genetic medicine may be legitimate, while heritable enhancement and the instrumentalization of embryonic human life face a strong prohibition.
Medicine may heal and restore, but human beings should not be treated as raw material for technological optimization or replacement.
VI
What is transmitted to the next generation, and who decides it.
Education should transmit civilization before attempting to transform it, with serious study of Christianity, history, classical civilization, the sciences and the arts.
Homeschooling should be legal and protected, because parents are the primary educators of their children.
A plural education system including Catholic, private, classical, vocational and monastic schools, with public funding able to follow families.
Universities should retain genuine academic freedom while ceasing to operate as institutions of compulsory ideological propagation.
State schools should have a Christian civilizational orientation rather than a secularist one.
Schools may teach factual reproductive biology, but moral formation on sexuality belongs primarily to parents and chosen religious institutions.
Languages, dialects, festivals, music, cuisine and craftsmanship should remain living parts of ordinary life rather than museum pieces.
Public architecture should respect human scale, local materials and regional tradition, and historic fabric should be preserved wherever reasonably possible.
VII
Authority, its limits, and the treatment of those who break the law.
Power should be exercised at the lowest competent level. Elections, representation and constitutional limits coexist with a rejection of philosophical liberalism.
Broad political and academic discussion is protected; speech that directly incites violence, terrorism or criminal conduct is not.
Proportionate punishment, protection of society, restitution where possible, and serious rehabilitation aimed at repentance and reintegration.
Punishment should be proportionate to gravity and culpability, protect society, provide restitution where possible and pursue rehabilitation where realistic.
Restore Europe accepts the traditional legitimacy of capital punishment in principle, reserved for exceptional cases involving the gravest crimes.
The death penalty may be legally available, but not mandatory, for the most aggravated forms of rape and child sexual abuse.
Regulated civilian firearm ownership for lawful purposes, under licensing, training and secure-storage requirements.
VIII
Access to necessary care, and the ethics practised within it.
Universal access to essential and medically necessary care, with safeguards against overuse and waste.
Public healthcare should respect Catholic medical ethics, and Catholic hospitals should be free to maintain their own ethical standards.
IX
Stewardship of an inheritance that was not made by us.
Nature is an inheritance entrusted to humanity rather than a commodity without limit or a divinity, and should be stewarded accordingly.
Energy policy should be judged by reliability, strategic resilience, affordability, environmental stewardship and long-term human welfare rather than loyalty to one technology.
Nuclear power may be permitted and supported where it is safe, reliable, strategically useful and environmentally responsible.
Fossil fuels should not be prohibited ideologically irrespective of their strategic or economic function, but unnecessary pollution and avoidable dependency should be reduced.
Renewable energy should be supported where technically sound, economically reasonable and compatible with landscapes, communities and grid reliability.
Environmental stewardship includes prudent climate mitigation and adaptation, but climate policy does not justify unlimited centralized control or policies that impose disproportionate hardship for negligible benefit.
X
Strategic independence, and a standing presumption against unnecessary war.
Strategic independence rather than imperial ambition, guided by prudence, legitimate national interest and a strong presumption against unnecessary war.
Restore Europe is sceptical of permanent dependence on NATO and favours greater national and European strategic independence.
Neither permanent alignment with Russia nor permanent ideological hostility toward Russia.
Restore Europe does not make political alignment with either Ukraine or Russia an independent objective of European foreign policy.
Constructive cooperation with the United States without political, military, technological or cultural dependency.
Pragmatic relations with China combined with strong protection against strategic dependence and control of critical infrastructure.
No permanent alignment with either Israel or Palestine; policy should focus on innocent life, regional stability, lawful diplomacy and concrete European interests.
Foreign aid should be limited, accountable and focused on concrete humanitarian or developmental needs rather than ideological nation-building or permanent dependency.
Economic sanctions are exceptional instruments for exceptionally grave cases, not routine tools of ideological alignment.
A strong volunteer military, trained reserves and a physically capable population are preferred to routine universal peacetime conscription.
Restore Europe supports verifiable multilateral reduction and eventual abolition of nuclear weapons.
Every question in the catalogue now carries a position. These are the figures inside those positions that have not been fixed, and will not be invented before there is a basis for them.
