The two new Executive Board members elected at the meeting are Marie Staunton (UK) and Linos-Alexander Sicilianos (Greece).
The FRA's Management Board is composed of one independent person appointed by each Member State, one independent person appointed by the Council of Europe and two representatives of the European Commission.
The Executive Board comprises the Chairperson and the Vice-Chairperson of the Management Board, two other members of the Management Board elected by the Management Board and one of the representatives of the European Commission. The person appointed by the Council of Europe may participate in the meetings of the Executive Board.
The newly elected Chairperson, Vice-Chairperson and Executive Board Members will take up their duties mid-January 2010.
Notes to Editors:
The FRA was established through Council Regulation (EC) No 168/2007 of 15 February 2007. It is an independent body of the EU based in Vienna. The FRA provides assistance and expertise on fundamental rights matters to the EU and its Member States, when they are implementing Community law. For more information visit http://fra.europa.eu/
The new Chairperson, Ms Ilze Brands Kehris is director of the Latvian Centre for Human Rights. She has participated in numerous research projects, the main areas of her research being minority rights, citizenship, anti-discrimination and fundamental freedoms. Ilze Brands Kehris was Vice-Chairperson of the Management Board of the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC, the FRA's predecessor) from 2004-2007, and was a member of the Executive Board of the FRA before being elected the new Chairperson of the Management Board.
The Vice-Chairperson, Mr Hannes Tretter, is the Management Board member from Austria. He is Professor for Fundamental and Human Rights law at the University of Vienna and Director of the "Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Menschenrechte" (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights). Mr Tretter is an expert on EU, Council of Europe and OSCE Human Rights protection.
For further information and interviews, please contact the FRA Media Team
E-mail: media@fra.europa.eu Tel.: +43 1 580 30 642