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Description
National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) play an important role for EU fundamental rights and rule of law processes in a variety of contexts. These range from ensuring that the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and other fundamental rights related EU law are effectively considered in assessing the fundamental rights situation in their respective countries, to contributions to the European Commission’s rule of law reporting.
FRA research indicates, however, that in a number of EU Member States NHRIs suffer from a lack of capacity, challenges to their independent mandate, and lack of knowledge regarding EU law, including the Charter. Even well-established NHRIs have recently come under government pressure. This hampers their ability to fully engage with EU fundamental rights and rule of law processes. For NHRIs to be better equipped to play out their role effectively as regards EU fundamental rights and rule of law processes, they would benefit from support to interact with the EU on these essential topics.
Against this background, this project will seek to strengthen the role of NHRIs in promoting and protecting fundamental rights and the rule of law, by providing them with institutional advice and support and boosting their capacity on EU law, with a focus on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The project will strengthen the role of NHRIs in the enforcement of the Charter at the national level, including by broadening their institutional knowledge base and building the capacity of NHRI staff in using the Charter in their work. It will also strengthen the capacity of NHRIs in monitoring fundamental rights and the rule of law, by increasing their engagement with relevant EU mechanisms that support fundamental rights and the rule of law on national level. Finally, the project will develop the capacity of NHRIs to monitor the Charter compliance in the implementation of EU funds, as foreseen by the Common Provisions Regulation for the EU Funds.
Summary of project results
The project was launched with a view to addressing a series of needs characterising the NHRIs landscape in Europe. In particular, the project addressed the following issues:
NHRIs’ limited capacity to engage with and make structured use of EU law, including monitoring of the rule of law process.
NHRIs limited capacity to systematically use the EU Charter to address certain aspects of fundamental rights protection.
Challenges to NHRIs’ independence and ability to exercise their mandate.
As peer-reviewed NHRIs, these beneficiary institutions are characterised by a common baseline (i.e., full compliance with the Paris Principles, a sign of their independence and effectiveness). They offer national-level human rights experience and a broad mandate to effect sustainable change in their home countries.
The overall goal of the project was thus to support NHRIs in promoting, protecting, and monitoring fundamental rights and the rule of law. The project aimed to do so by strengthening the role and capacity of NHRIs to engage in EU level fundamental rights and rule of law processes. This in turn is also expected to generate positive outcomes for other institutions, administrative structures and civil society organisations, as well as individuals, especially those belonging to specific vulnerable groups, which would benefit from higher levels of national protection through EU fundamental rights law.
The project identified ways in which NHRIs can contribute to raising awareness of the importance of EU law among citizens, civil society, legal professionals, policy makers and the media thus addressing low awareness about the Charter among legal practitioners and public servants. The project also pointed to the need for a more meaningful participation of fundamental rights actors such as NHRIs to deal with EU Funds conditionality as additional task, which in turn will require sufficient human and financial resourcing iof NHRIs. While NHRIs jointly contribute through ENNHRI to the Commission''s annual rule of law reporting, the Commission reports regular reference NHRI findings as sources of information and NHRIs have also been involved in national rule of law dialogue to advance implementation of the reports'' findings.
The project and FRA research indicated various action points as a way forward to ensure that the EU can build on efficient and resilient NHRIs in all its Member States.