On Monday 7 June, EU Justice Ministers adopted the EU Council’s position (‘general approach’) on the draft regulation to amend the current mandate of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). The Agency documents and analyses what is happening in the field of fundamental rights in the EU and its Member States.
One of the aims of the revision is to adapt the Agency’s mandate to the Lisbon Treaty and, in particular, to the EU’s competences as redefined by the Treaty.
The EU Council therefore agreed that the scope of FRA’s activities should be extended to include police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters.
It has, however, introduced a provision to keep outside the mandate of the Agency the activities of the Union or the Member States carried out in relation to or within the framework of the Common Foreign and Security Policy.
The European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, expressed the Commission’s regrets in this regard to the ministers. “This is an area of Union competence to which the Charter of Fundamental Rights applies without restriction. The Agency must be able to work in all the areas of competence of the Union to which the Charter applies”, insisted Mr Reynders.
However, he gave his support to the text, which he recalled was only a “basis for starting negotiations with the European Parliament”.
Among the Member States, only Austria expressed disappointment on this point. “We would have liked an additional step to include the Common Foreign and Security Policy”, stressed the Austrian Permanent Representative Nikolaus Marschik. He added that his government hoped that this position would only be intermediate and that the debate could continue in order to broaden the scope of the Agency’s mandate.
This issue will certainly be raised in the upcoming negotiations with MEPs, who, like Austria, support the extension of the FRA’s mandate to the Common Foreign and Security Policy.
“EU ambitions for developing a stronger external dimension should be reflected in the further involvement of the FRA” in these areas, note MEPs in their resolution on the subject, adopted by the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties in mid-March.
Annual programming. The Commission had also suggested that the thematic Multi-annual Framework, which currently defines the Agency’s work programme, should be replaced by more efficient multi-annual programming.
On this point, the EU Council also requires that an annual programming project be drawn up, each year, by the Director of the Agency.
To see the general approach adopted: https://bit.ly/2TCobdj (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)