Within the framework of collaboration between the BHRA and EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), on 21-22 February BHRS lead researcher Daina Celma attended a conference in Brussels. It was the closing event of a FRA project aimed at supporting national human rights institutions. The project was implemented with the aid of EEA and Norway funds and it was aimed at strengthening the capacity of national human rights institutions in the field of European Union law, with a particular focus on the implementation of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
The project partners were the Bulgarian, Croatian, Cypriot, Latvian, Polish, Slovakian and Slovenian national human rights institutions, as well as the European Network of National Human Rights Institutions (ENNHRI), which all developed and implemented various activities. Their goal was to enhance the implementation of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights at the national level and to foster the rule of law reporting. The activities included training for judges and other legal professionals, development of guides, discussions at the policy-making level, etc.
Also the project partners from Latvia – the Ombudsman's Office employees Kristīne Pakārkle and Ruta Siliņa – presented the implemented activities, which included several trainings and the social discussions series “Spark your empathy!” This programme of talks is a creative way of promoting a societal debate on various grounds of discrimination.
At the conference, the partners presented the results of their respective projects and discussed three main thematic blocks: the role of the national human rights institutions in the practical implementation of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights; the application of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in the implementation of the European Union funds and the monitoring of the compliance thereof; and the role of the national human rights institutions in the rule of law reporting.
The conference conclusions recongnise that the national human rights institutions have the central the role in the application of the European Union standards of fundamental rights and that they ought to be involved in the implementation of the European Union funds and in the strengthening of the rule of law. To ensure that, the states need to bolster their financial capacity and human resources capacity and establish a regular and systematic mechanisms of cooperation. The European Commission, in its part, should foster the collaboration between the national human rights institutions of different countries. At the conference, FRA also presented its report “EU funds: Ensuring compliance with fundamental rights”.
