The 11 renowned experts are: Kieran Bradley, François Crépeau, Theodora Kostakopoulou, Joanna Kulesza, Julia Laffranque, Anja Mihr, Francesco Palermo, Martin Scheinin, Nico Schrijver, Anne Waldschmidt, Siniša Zrinščak. Their academic expertise covers key disciplines such as EU law, sociology, public international law, political science and comparative (public) law.
The multidisciplinary composition of the Committee reflects the agency’s interdisciplinary approach that looks at ‘law in context’. It not only examines legal texts but studies how human rights play out in the real life experiences of rights holders.
Against this background, the new members of the Scientific Committee bring together various human rights disciplines as well as specialist expertise in key thematic areas such as citizenship, security, data protection, disability, migration and asylum, cybersecurity, religious freedom or minority rights.
This unique composition will allow the Committee to follow the work of the agency across the large thematic spectrum of its work ranging from equality rights to access to justice.
The members include present and former members of European Courts, the United National Human Rights Committee, monitoring bodies of the Council of Europe or national monitoring bodies. For instance, it includes an acting judge at the European Court of Human Rights, the first United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism or the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants.
There is a wide geographical spread among members as they come from Croatia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands and Poland.
The newly-appointed members’ term of office starts on 4 June 2018. They will be members for five years. A Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson will be elected by the Scientific Committee for a term of one year.
According to FRA’s founding regulation, these 11 independent people should be highly qualified in the field of fundamental rights and will be “the guarantor of the scientific quality of the Agency's work”.