Freemasons keen to open office in EU capital

He said that masonic lodges in Europe remain divided on the subject, with some more "shy" than others of attracting publicity by opening an office in the EU capital.

He added that practical problems are more important than the divisions, and sketched out an agenda for the future outfit.

"I think we will one day manage to create a general masonic delegation, for the sake of free-thinking in the European institutions. It's possible politically. It's less possible at the financial level, as we have infinitely smaller resources than the churches," Mr Quillardet explained.

The mason said that the Brussels bureau's first task would be to promote the idea of citizenship: "It is necessary to impose the universal idea of the Enlightenment, which consists of the notion that people are citizens and European citizens before being Jewish, black, Maghreb, homosexual, heterosexual."

Mr Quillardet explained that the Grand Orient de France has already created a cell which attempts to bring together all the lodges in Europe.

In 2007 it organised a pan-European masonic congress in Strasbourg, with subsequent meetings in 2008 and 2009 in Greece and Turkey. The 2010 event is to be in Portugal.

He added that in 2008 European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso for the first time met with delegates from a group of lodges and in the same year wrote a letter to the international congress in Athens.

"We told him that apart from its Christian roots, Europe owed much to Greek and Roman philosophy, Renaissance humanism and the Enlightenment. We obtained representation for masonic orders and for groups which defend secularism in Bepa," he said, in reference to the Bureau of European Policy Advisers, a high-level policy analysis unit in the EU commission.

The Barroso letter was "for us a recognition on the intellectual landscape," Mr Quillardet explained.