A Missed Opportunity: The Fundamental Rights Agency and the Euro Area Crisis

Volume 22, Issue 1, January 2016 is a Special Issue with the theme 'Fundamental Rights In Crisis'. Issue edited by: Elisabeth Lambert Abdelgawad, Gaëtan CliquennoisAbstract
This paper focuses on the role played by the Agency for Fundamental Rights in the wake of the euro area crisis. The Agency was created as part of a wider trend towards a broader, more pro-active strategy for the protection of fundamental rights that includes administrative and political rights promotion as a complement to judicial enforcement. In the context of the euro crisis, however, the Agency has not been able to fulfil this role. This paper will analyze the reasons for this missed opportunity, as well as its consequences. It will argue that the sidelining of the Agency in this area is due to the confluence of two factors: on the one hand, the Agency's lack of discretion in setting its own agenda; and, on the other, the predominance of the executive, and resulting resurgence of intergovernmentalism, that have been a feature of post-crisis developments.

Ultimately, this paper argues that the sidelining of the Agency in this context is an unfortunate result, given the magnitude of the political debate in this area and the valuable role that the Agency might have played or could still play in informing it.