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The emergence of an EU counter-radicalisation (CR) strategy has challenged the usual reluctance of European institutions to tackle value-loaded issues. This article examines whether this new policy alters EU policy-making and especially its approach to religion. It illuminates, first, the triggers of such a CR strategy (traumatic events, popular expectations and international influences). It then shows how the shift of CR from foreign to domestic EU affairs leads to the acknowledgement of religion as a multi-dimensional phe nomenon and to the involvement of a greater number of political, bureaucratic and civil society actors. Still, usual patterns of EU public action apply to reduce the controversial potential of CR: circumscription to a legal and bureaucratic logic, institutional bur den-sharing, delegation to member states and civil society, hollow ing of the normative content of religion. In conclusion, CR has sparked a new EU policy field but has not radically shaken the routine of European politics.