Newsroom

Opening Video for FRA event - From wrongs to rights: ending severe labour exploitation.
FRA research published today highlights the urgent need for European governments to do more to tackle severe labour exploitation in firms, factories and farms across the EU. First-hand interviews with hundreds of exploited workers reveal the illegal practices in sectors including agriculture, construction, domestic work, hospitality, manufacturing and transport.
Fundamental Rights Report 2019: Ten years after the UN’s Disability Convention entered into force, 2018 saw it continue
to drive advances in disability rights across the EU.
Fundamental Rights Report 2019: In some Member States access to justice faces challenges. Judicial independence continues to cause
concerns. Victims’ procedural rights need more effective implementation. Gaps in preventing
violence against women and domestic violence remain.
Fundamental Rights Report 2019: Not all children benefit equally from efforts to guarantee child rights.
Some groups face particular difficulties.
Fundamental Rights Report 2019: 2018 was a landmark year for data protection. New EU rules took effect and complaints of breaches increased significantly.
Fundamental Rights Report 2019: Although migrant arrivals to the EU continue to drop, it remains a divisive issue politically and
across society. Nearly 4 in 10 Europeans think immigration is more of a problem than a solution.
And nearly a half overestimate the number of irregular migrants in their country.
Fundamental Rights Report 2019: Anti-Gypsyism across the EU remains a persistent barrier to improving the social and
economic situation of Roma today.
Fundamental Rights Report 2019: Ethnic minorities and migrants continue to face harassment and discrimination across the EU,
despite longstanding EU laws against racism.
Fundamental Rights Report 2019: Efforts to advance equality moved ahead in some areas but remain stalled in others.
Fundamental Rights Report 2019: The Charter of Fundamental Rights is the EU’s bill of human rights. These rights and principles have to be respected and promoted by EU institutions and Member States whenever they act within EU law. Approaching the Charter’s 10th anniversary, Member States do not yet make full use of the potential it offers.
Fundamental Rights Report 2019: Implementing fundamental and human rights helps create a sustainable future.
Here the EU plays a key role.
Michael O’Flaherty
Those of us who care about human rights, including of LGBTI persons, need to be outraged and cry out in defence of what has been achieved so far. There are those who would dismantle the human rights protection system – what has been called modernity’s greatest achievement. Wake up to that, wake up to the threat, wake up to the risk. As the late Stephane Hessel put it, it is time to ‘Indignez vous’, in French, which means ‘get indignant’. And let’s marshal that indignation into smart campaigns that cannot be ignored.
In this video blog Michael O'Flaherty focuses on EuroPride and the need to stand up for the fundamental rights of the LGBTIQ community.
Many people across the EU risk being left behind, as growing intolerance and attacks on people’s fundamental rights continue to erode the considerable progress achieved to date, finds FRA’s Fundamental Rights Report 2019.
Michael O’Flaherty
FRA Director's speech to a high-level Romanian Presidency conference on the role and status of women in modern society: Between empowerment, leadership and gender discrimination given on 29 May 2019 in Bucharest.
In the latest edition of his video blog, FRA Director Michael O'Flaherty focuses on press freedom and the importance of an independent media for the society.
Speech
Michael O'Flaherty
Speech by the FRA Director, Michael O’Flaherty, at the 2019 Sheehy Skeffington School on Social Justice and Human Rights, Dublin, 10 May 2019.