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European Commission

FRA's founding regulation stipulates that the agency works closely with all relevant Union institutions. The European Commission plays a key role in the agency’s work and participates in its governing bodies.

There is also a Commission representative in FRA’s Executive Board, which assists the Management Board in all its work.

FRA staff are in constant contact with the relevant departments at the Commission. In this way, the Commission can readily draw on the agency’s assistance and expertise when developing, implementing and evaluating EU policies and legislation. The close coordination also serves to ensure that reports and research initiated by the Commission are taken into account in the agency’s work, and vice versa. FRA works particularly closely with the Directorate-General for Justice and its Directorate for Fundamental Rights and Union Citizenship. The following are examples of FRA’s cooperation with the Commission:

  • FRA regularly informs inter-service meetings and takes part in Commission expert and advisory groups, such as the Expert Group on Framework Decision of Racism and Xenophobia, Contact group on Return Directive, Contact Group Migration, Contact Group of EU Agencies on migrant smuggling and others;
  • in 2015 FRA published the results of the project “Victims of crime in the EU: the extent and nature of support for victims”, that was developed at the request of the European Commission and aimed to identify promising practices in the area of victim support services. Such practices increase the exchange of know-how, which is reflected in the Commission’s roadmap for strengthening the rights and protection of victims. This in turn makes provision for a future recommendation to EU Member States based on existing promising practices;
  • upon invitation of the Commission FRA participates  in the ‘Roma Task Force’ and contributes to its work through the provision of data. In April 2011, the Commission mandated FRA in its EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies to 2020 with the following tasks: collecting data regularly across the EU; and assisting Member States in developing monitoring tools. The upcoming FRA EU-MIDIS II survey will contribute in this regard.
Towards a new Roma inclusion initiative
27/02/2020

On 18 February, the FRA Director welcomed the renewed focus on the post-2020 EU initiative for Roma equality and inclusion in his speech at the 16th Meeting of the National Roma Contact Points in Brussel.