The FRA Management Board on 27 September elected Maija Sakslin as its new Chairperson and Manfred Nowak as Vice-Chairperson.

The relation between security concerns and data protection, the need to agree on new common asylum rules and the implementation of the Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities are just a few of the many fundamental rights issues that are currently being discussed at EU level. The outcome of the actual discussions is crucial for improving fundamental rights, as highlighted in the 2011 Annual Report of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) launched today in the European Parliament.

Discrimination against people with intellectual disabilities and people with mental health problems persists despite the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) by the EU and 21 Member States. Two new FRA reports capture the experiences of exclusion and discrimination of people with intellectual disabilities or mental health problems.

The two-day seminar, "Remembering for the future", on how to empower citizens and spread promising practices of human rights and Holocaust education, will take place in Copenhagen on Thursday 26 and Friday 27 April.