Doubts cast over rights agency

By Judith Crosbie

Date: 15/06/06

A leading human rights expert is questioning the need for a proposed agency to monitor rights in the EU given the reluctance of member states to grant it a broad enough remit. The call, which will be made in the European Parliament on Monday (19 June), follows the failure by member states to reach agreement on the setting up of the Fundamental Rights Agency.

Olivier De Schutter, head of the EU Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights, which compiles reports and opinions for the EU, said it would be better to abandon the agency altogether than spend millions of euros on a body with a narrow competence and no ability to effect change.

"It would have limited competence and far too much money. I do not think the quality of the agency would be directly proportionate to the budget," he said. The agency is to have EUR 13 million at the beginning of the 2007-13 budgetary period and EUR 30m by the end.

Some member states, including the UK, Ireland and Slovakia, have opposed giving the agency powers to conduct police, judicial and security reviews of member states, preferring to limit its remit to discrimination, racism, social and employment rights. But both the Parliament and the Commission have been pushing for a broader competence for the agency.

It was hoped that the agency could at least initially be established with a narrower focus which could be expanded in the future. But concerns raised by Germany at a foreign ministers' meeting this week put into question the entire concept of the agency. The German delegation was said to be responding to fears raised in the country's parliament that the agency might overlap with the human rights body the Council of Europe and cost too much. "It was a big bomb to be dropped when you've cleared away issues which member states have already agreed," said one official. The issue has been taken off the agenda for a meeting of EU government leaders on 15-16 June and the planned date of January next year for the agency to begin its work has been pushed back.

Article features comments by Olivier De Schutter, head of the EU Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights, who was critical of setting up an EU Fundamental Rights Agency with a very narrow remit.