High hopes as EU’s human rights agency starts work

Human rights campaigners are hoping that a new EU agency which begins work today (1 March) will develop its remit and become a strong check on European shortcomings in the area.

The Fundamental Rights Agency was in December given the green light to begin work but with a remit focused on discrimination, racism and gender equality. Some member states strongly opposed allowing the agency scrutiny over their law enforcement practices.

The agency will give opinions on EU law relevant to human rights, collect information, raise awareness and produce reports.

Kinga Gál, Hungarian centre-right MEP and author of a report on the agency, said the European Parliament and the European Commission would be able to ask the agency to examine certain issues that arise. "If any urgent issues which cannot be predicted come up I could imagine the agency could be asked to look into them," she said, adding that the Parliament’s inquiry into CIA activity in Europe was an example of such an issue.

But Dick Oosting, director of Amnesty International in Brussels, said the Council of Ministers would have the ultimate decision on the scope of the agency and a strong agency would only emerge if the people running it were forthright. "With a good director, good members of the management board they could explore the limits of its work," he said.

Oosting added that there was a need for a strong agency with an overall scope for human rights in the EU. "There are a number of serious issues such as counter-terrorism…we need to be able to generate real discussion about how to deal with issues like the CIA revelations," he said.

But the agency’s development will be watched closely by the Council of Europe, which has made no secret of its opposition to the setting up of a broad-ranging EU human rights body which it feels would cut across its role.

The agency takes over from the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia today and a new transitional director and management board will be put in place. Within four months each EU state must nominate a member of the management board. The Parliament and the Council will choose, from a list drawn up by the Commission, the director, who will then be formally appointed by the board. The agency is to have an annual budget of €13 million at the beginning of the 2007-13 budgetary period, which will gradually be increased to €30m.

A ceremony to mark the launch of the agency will be held today in Vienna, the seat of the agency. José Manuel Barroso, president of the Commission, Franco Frattini, commissioner for justice, freedom and security, Brigitte Zypries, German minister of justice, Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer and Hans-Gert Pöttering, the president of the Parliament, will attend.

Human rights campaigners are hoping that a new EU agency which begins work today (1 March) will develop its remit and become a strong check on European shortcomings in the area.