Back„Morten Kjaerum has significantly helped FRA to become one of the pillars of Europe’s fundamental rights architecture,” says FRA Management Board Chairperson, Frauke Lisa Seidensticker. “On behalf of the agency, I would like to thank Morten very much. We are enormously grateful for his commitment to and passion for the agency and its work, and we sincerely wish him all the best for the future.”
Over the years, Morten Kjaerum has guided FRA helping it grow into a mature and well-respected expert fundamental rights body of around 100 staff. The agency acts as a bridge between EU, and national human rights bodies and civil society to improve the promotion and protection of fundamental rights for the 500 million people living in the EU today. Some of the significant achievements during his term in office include:
· The establishment of an independent body which is seen as being useful and responsive to stakeholder needs. As a result it is regularly consulted by the EU institutions on issues ranging from non-discrimination and Roma integration to migration and internal security.
· The creation of a unique pool of comparative data and evidence summarised in over 100 reports for EU Institutions and Member States address fundamental rights problems with FRA’s robust evidence-based advice. For example, FRA’s violence against women survey received massive attention by European and national media and policy makers, and continues to contribute to the many ratifications of the Council of Europe’s Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.
· A greater awareness of hate crime in the EU. FRA surveys on ethnic minorities, antisemitism and homo- / transphobia have been a wake-up call for Member States to address under-reporting of hate crime incidents. FRA has followed this up, for example, with assistance to Member States through its dedicated working party on hate crime.
· Smooth cooperation and a productive working relationship with all key stakeholders including civil society and the Council of Europe, as exemplified by FRA’s popular series of handbooks on human rights case law, developed together with the European Court of Human Rights.
The results of FRA’s first external evaluation in 2013 underlined how far the agency has come. The evaluation, for which over 300 stakeholders from the European Commission, European Parliament, civil society organisations and others were interviewed, found FRA to be a unique and valued provider of comparative, EU-wide studies on fundamental rights.
Until the appointment of a new FRA Director, the Head of Administration, Constantinos Manolopoulos, will be the interim Director as of 1 April 2015.
The vacancy notice was published in the Official Journal of the European Union in October 2014
Source: European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights
