News Item

Five priorities to guide FRA’s work

The Agency has published its five year Strategic Plan that will guide the Agency from 2018 until 2022. It will help ensure FRA continues to be acknowledged as a unique and independent centre of reference and excellence for promoting and protecting human rights in the EU.

The priorities build on the findings from the Agency’s independent external evaluation that in 2017 surveyed FRA’s key partners and stakeholders. The evaluation underlined how stakeholders value the Agency’s high quality fundamental rights support, drawn from its expertise and the robust evidence it collects.

Moving forward, the FRA strategic plan 2018-2022 identifies five priority areas that will guide the Agency’s work each year during this period. These include:

  1. Identifying trends: collecting and analysing comparable data;
  2. Contributing to better law making and implementation: providing independent advice;
  3. Supporting rights-compliant policy responses:  providing real-time assistance and expertise;
  4. Effectively promoting rights, values and freedoms;
  5. Strengthening cooperation with national and local fundamental rights actors: working with communities of support.

In addition, the plan describes the Agency’s strategic objectives and core activities in each priority area. These include: the continued use of large-scale quantitative surveys alongside its comparative data analyses; the provision of assistance and expertise on fundamental rights issues to EU bodies and national authorities; continued on-the-ground support to help respond to fundamental rights challenges; awareness-raising activities on the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights; as well as analysing challenges and threats to civil society’s role and space in the EU.

The FRA strategic plan was developed drawing on input from the Agency’s in-house experts. It was adopted by the FRA’s Management Board, following strategic reflections with its members. Its board is made up of independent human rights experts appointed by each EU Member State and the Council of Europe, as well as representatives of the European Commission.