Almost twenty years after adoption of EU laws forbidding discrimination, people of African descent in the EU face widespread and entrenched prejudice and exclusion. This report outlines selected results from FRA's second large-scale EU-wide survey on migrants and minorities (EU-MIDIS II). It examines the experiences of almost 6,000 people of African descent in 12 EU Member States.
Civil society organisations play a critical role in democracies, and the importance of their work is widely recognised in international legal and policy documents. However, they face many obstacles when it comes to their day-to-day work. Based on the results of an online consultation with FRA's civil society network, the Fundamental Rights Platform (FRP), in September 2018, this paper complements the January 2018 report.
This report presents the main insights gained during the EU Fundamental Rights Agency’s project on local engagement for Roma inclusion, which explores how to best involve Roma in integration efforts at the local level. Bringing together local authorities and residents, especially Roma, it investigated what aspects work, which ones do not, and why this is the case.
Antisemitism can be expressed in the form of verbal and physical attacks, threats,
harassment, discrimination and unequal treatment, property damage and graffiti or other
forms of speech or text, including on the internet. The present report provides an overview of data on antisemitism as recorded by
international organisations and by official and unofficial sources in the 28 European
Union (EU) Member States, based on their own definitions and categorisations.
The EU Agency for Fundamental Rights’ 2018 Fundamental Rights Forum
brought together more than 700 human rights champions at a time of
widening social divisions and increasingly polarised politics across
Europe.
As a very modern human rights catalogue containing many rights not found in established bills of rights, the Charter indeed looks good on paper. Those familiar with the main principles of EU law can usually quickly recite that the Charter is always binding on the EU, and binding on Member States only when they are "implementing EU law". But what does this often-quoted language from Article 51 of the Charter actually mean?
This note draws attention to the recent trend of criminalising search and rescue operations (SAR) in the Mediterranean Sea carried out by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or other private entities. This includes seizing rescue vessels, as well as arrests for crew members, in some EU Member States. Most of such incidents concerned NGOs operating in the Central Mediterranean Sea.
With this Opinion, FRA aims to contribute to the European Parliament's own-initiative report on the “Implementation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in the EU institutional framework”, being prepared in the Parliament’s Committee for Constitutional Affairs (AFCO). The request aims at understanding the interaction between the Charter’s implementation at national and EU level, and whether there are “instruments, mechanisms and practices” available at EU level to assist Member States to better implement the Charter.
These 10 keys sum up the core points
communicators and practitioners in various fields
raised in FRA’s expert meetings, practitioners’
seminars and focus groups in 2017 and 2018.
This Opinion by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) aims to inform the European Parliament’s position concerning the legislative proposal for a Regulation on strengthening the security of identity cards of European Union (EU) citizens and of residence documents issued to EU citizens and their family members exercising their right of free movement. It focuses on the processing of biometric data and complements the opinion published by the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS).
In November 2017, the European Commission requested FRA’s support in evaluating the impact on fundamental rights of the European Border Surveillance System (Eurosur) Regulation. Further to this request, FRA reviewed the work of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) and analysed cooperation agreements concluded by EU Member States with third countries which are relevant for the exchange of information for the purposes of Eurosur. This report presents the main findings of such review.
This Opinion aims to
inform the European Parliament’s position on the legislative proposal amending the
Visa Information System, the Visa Code and other related provisions of EU law. The
European Commission presented the proposal on 16 May 2018 and EU legislators are
currently discussing it.
Severe labour exploitation is widespread across the European Union. While workplace inspections can help counter this phenomenon, they need to be strengthened to do so effectively. Based on interviews and focus group discussions with almost 240 exploited workers active in diverse economic sectors, this report provides important evidence on how unscrupulous employers manipulate and undermine inspections, and on what can be done to counteract such efforts.
The EU Return Directive (2008/115/EC) in Article 8 (6) introduced an important fundamental rights safeguard for third-country nationals ordered to leave the EU because they do not or no longer fulfil the conditions for entry and/or stay. According to the Directive, Member States must provide for an effective forced-return monitoring system.
Across the European Union, people face hatred because of their skin colour, ethnicity, religion, gender or sexuality. In response, the EU and its Member States have introduced laws against hate crime and support services for victims. But these will only fulfil their potential if victims report hate-motivated harassment and violence to the police, and if police officers record such incidents as hate crimes. This report provides rich and detailed information on hate crime recording and data collection systems across the EU, including any systemic cooperation with civil society.
European societies are not getting any younger! It is a simple truth we must face both about ourselves and Europe as a whole. In two generations, by 2080, those aged 65 or above will account for almost 30% of the European Union’s population.
The year 2017 brought both progress and setbacks in terms of rights protection. The European Pillar of Social Rights marked an important move towards a more ‘social Europe’. But, as experiences with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights underscore, agreement on a text is merely a first step. Even in its eighth year as the EU's binding bill of rights, the Charter's potential was not fully exploited, highlighting the need to more actively promote its use.
The year 2017 brought both progress and setbacks in terms of fundamental rights protection. FRA’s Fundamental Rights Report 2018 reviews major developments in the field, identifying both achievements and remaining areas of concern.