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Romania is officially designated as a secular state, although there is no effective separation of church and state. Indeed, according to Law no. 142/1999, state-recognized religious denominations employees receive salaries from the state budget. Therefore, all Romanian citizens who pay taxes contribute to clergy salaries, regardless of their religious affiliation.
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Romania is one of the most religious countries in Europe, with 92% of people saying that they believe in God. Irreligion is much lower in Romania than in most other European countries and is among the lowest in the world. At the 2011 census, only 0.11% of the population declared itself atheist, up from the 2002 census, while 0.10% do not belong to any religion.
Demographics
Over 20,700 people in Romania are atheists, according to 2011 census. Thus, the number of Romanians who do not believe in God almost tripled in the previous decade. The highest concentration is in Bucharest–Ilfov area (nearly 8,000 atheists) and generally wealthy areas of the country (Transylvania, Banat), the lowest – in Oltenia (750), Dobruja and poor areas of Wallachia (Teleorman, Călărași, Ialomița). Before the census of October 2011, Secular Humanist Association (ASUR) conducted a campaign through which tried to promote an accurate census, in which people who consider themselves atheists to have confidence in selecting this option. According to ASUR, European Values Survey (1999) and World Values Survey (2005) polls show that the real percentage of those who declare themselves atheists is at least 6–7% of the population, 60–70 times more than the result of census in 2002. In The Cambridge Companion to Atheism (2006), Phil Zuckerman gives a figure of 4%. A 2014 poll by WIN/Gallup International Association shows that 16% of Romanians are not religious and only 1% are convinced atheists.
Socio-demographic profile
According to a study conducted by researchers from the Soros Foundation, Romanian atheists are a very young group and with a significantly higher level of education that the national average: 53% of atheists are under 30 years, and 33% of them have completed higher education. The group of atheists/agnostics/persons without religion lives in a proportion of 59% in urban areas – in the capital and other major cities – and are easier to find in Wallachia and harder in Moldavia.
Atheists are more intolerant than most Romanians to almost all social groups on which were questioned: Roma, sectarians, Hungarians, Muslims, Jews, poor. The only exception to this string of intolerance is represented by homosexuals, towards them atheists showing more tolerance than the national average. As ideological positioning, atheists declare themselves, equally, both right-wing and left-wing, most of them (56%) placing at the center of the ideological line. Only eight percent say they prefer leftist economic policies, while right-wing economic policies attract 47% of atheists.