The age of Enlightenment and the prolonged struggle of the Jews for equal civil rights gave the awaited result. The Jewish communities of Europe were particularly active not only during the revolution of 1848. The struggle for consolidation of the equality principle in legislation started to be a reality long before the revolution, as vividly demonstrated by repeated public discussions of the legal status of the Jews by such wellknown European figures as G. Lessing, N. Mendelson, A.-B. Gregoire, who advocated for the emancipation of the Jews. In the XVIII century, the development of legal thought apparently called for changes in the then legal order of Europe. Gradually, restrictions regarding place of residence, acquisition of ownership right to real estate and a number of other absurd restrictions (prohibition to take Christian names, permission to marry, etc.) were removed from the Jews and they were granted freedom of religion, and active and passive electoral right. Having acquired such broad civil and political rights, Jews had the opportunity to be actively involved in relations under public law, as evidenced by the election of five Jews to the Austrian Reichstag which began working in 1848. And that was not an isolated case. As discriminatory restrictions were lifted, the assimilation process began. Increasingly more Jews began holding positions with public authorities and local self-government bodies in such European States as England, Sweden, Denmark, Hungary, Norway.

The aim of the article is to highlight the legal ways of implementing the emancipation ideas in the European States in XVIII–XIX centuries through consolidation of the principle of equality and freedom of religion in statutory regulations.

Based on the analysis of legislation granting the Jews equal rights with the indigenous population of Europe, the author studies the main groups of legislative acts which proclaimed emancipation and the formal aspect of implementation of the principle of Jewish communities’ equality in Europe. Besides, the author analyzes the types of special statutory regulations which regulated the issues of legal arrangement of Jewish communities: general regulations which determined the legal status of Jews, and particular regulations which declared the principle of equality of Jews in civil rights, granted political rights to them on an equal basis with Christians, determined the limits of religious and legal autonomy etc.

The author comes to the conclusion that the emancipation process in Europe was characterized by instability and inconsistency. One country after another adopted legislative acts granting equal rights to the Jews; however, that trend was often followed by regress and abolition of the acts adopted. At the same time, despite instability and internal contradictions, the process of emancipation of the Jews in Europe in XVIII–XIX centuries was characterized by the progressing reflection of democratic values present in the legal consciousness of European society.