The FRA's organisational structure includes a Scientific Committee.
The Scientific Committee shall be the guarantor of the scientific quality of the FRA's work and will be involved by the Director in the early stages of the preparation of the majority of FRA's documents drawn up to meet its tasks.
The Scientific Committee is composed of eleven independent persons, highly qualified in the field of fundamental rights.
The FRA Management Board, at its meeting of 25-26 May 2023, appointed the members of the current Agency's Scientific Committee (1) .
The members bring together specialist expertise in key thematic areas such as EU migration law; European and comparative disability law; comparative constitutional law; engagement of domestic courts with international law; interaction between EU and Council of Europe law; equality law; artificial intelligence and automated computing; fundamental rights structures; the rule of law; populism; political participation and civil society engagement; international and European criminal law; international human rights law.
The Committee will be able to build on the experience that the members gained as legal practitioners seen that two members served until recently as national Human Rights Commissioners. Others worked for national Ombudspersons or are members of international bodies such as the UN International Law Commission. The Committee also includes a former member of the UN Human Rights Committee, a present member of the Advisory Committee for the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and a member of the Group of Experts of the European Commission on Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation.
There is a wide geographical spread among members as they come from Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands (2 members), Poland, Spain and Albania.
The term of office of the members of the Scientific Committee shall be five years not renewable. The Scientific Committee elects its Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson for a term of office of one year. The term of office of the current Scientific Committee will be from 4 June 2023 to 3 June 2028.
The Management Board appointed the members following a transparent call for applications and selection procedure after having consulted the competent committee of the European Parliament. The Management Board also had to ensure even geographical representation of members of the Scientific Committee. In addition, the members of the Management Board could not be members of the Scientific Committee.
(1) in accordance with Articles 12 and 14 of the Agency's Regulation
