EU Heads of Mission exchanged with the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) Director Sirpa Rautio

On 21 September, EUDEL hosted a EU Heads of Missions exchange of views with the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) Director Sirpa Rautio. The Director reaffirmed that the Council of Europe remains one of FRA’s main partners, as both organisations’ work is complementary, including in engagement with the EU enlargement candidates.  She also outlined the FRA’s most recent cooperation with National Human Rights Structures, focusing on issues such as asylum and AI oversight.

The Director also had the opportunity to address GR-EXT, reaffirming the complementarity and continued strong cooperation with the Council of Europe on issues such as civic space, migration, equality and non-discrimination, protection of minorities, freedom of speech and countering gender-based violence. 

The exchanges demonstrated once again how much FRA’s independent expertise, scrutiny and assistance on fundamental rights is needed and used by EU Member States, including in the Council of Europe context, also giving us credibility when raising human rights issues in the broader CoE region.