Acronym: FAIR
Title: EU Charter of Fundamental rights: Awareness raising and Instruments to promote a culture of Rights
Call: CERV-2023-CHAR-LITI
(Promote civil society organisations’ awareness of, capacity building and
implementation of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights)
EU nr: 101142917
Period: 24 months 1/3/2024-28/2/2026
Budget : Total budget: 635,562.44€ / VUB budget: 96,380,00€
Contact:
Paul De Hert and https://frc.research.vub.be/about
At VUB TT ERIS we got a chance to ask Paul 2 questions: What is FAIR about and Why is FAIR important to VUB?
What is FAIR about?
Paul: “All partners of the consortium have been involved in multi-disciplinary research through their network FRANET to have a better understanding of the practical use of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Based on the annual monitoring on the use of the EU Charter at country level as well as the comparative report on the same issue by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), the FAIR project partners got a clear overview of the needs and challenges, as well as an in-depth understanding of good practices, existing in their country. This knowledge includes knowing how the EU Charter is being used in practice in Courts’ decisions, rights defenders’ mandate, activities of CSOs -especially as compared to other instruments, such as the European Convention of Human Rights.
Thus, FAIR partners could accurately identify the gap between the factual and the potential use and impact of the EU Charter in the protection and implementation of fundamental rights in their country. Based on this great knowledge at the national level, the project consortium set up to engage in awareness-raising activities towards 4 major key stakeholders: CSOs, rights defenders, justice practitioners and the general population in order to strengthen the application of the Charter. The implementation fields range from migration and border controls, the rule of law, the independence of medias to the protection of vulnerable groups.”
Why is FAIR important to VUB?
Paul: “Increasing awareness about the EU Charter and consequently deploying this key instrument more often is of the upmost importance to achieve greater rights’ protection in the EU. At the moment, people do not know much about the Charter. A recent Eurobarometer survey showed that only 42% of respondents have heard about the Charter and only 12% really know what it is. Moreover, six out of ten respondents want to know more about their rights and where to turn to if their Charter rights are violated. In practice, people often turn to ‘Civil Society Organisations (CSO)’ to know more about their rights.
Indeed, most (80%) CSOs report that people turn to them for information about their rights and an even higher proportion (85%) that they carry out awareness-raising activities about rights. Thus, it is essential that CSOs are aware of Charter rights so that they can better inform and support those who turn to them. In this regard, the FRA’s 2020 Analysis of the targeted consultations for the Commission's new Charter strategy stressed that civil-society organisations would need some specific measures and actions to use the Charter better and more frequently as an example via trainings. This is why CSOs were identified as one of the major stakeholders in the FAIR project.”
“Regarding the use of the Charter in recent years, we can indeed say that some results were positively achieved. For example, the Charter has effectively triggered new EU legislation protecting fundamental rights and there has been an increase of the use of the Charter by EU and national Courts. The FRA also provides comparable data and analysis to support EU institutions and Member States. Finally, also the number of independent national human rights institutions and bodies increased.”
“However, some gaps remain. For example, when we look at our country, Belgium, the backlog in asylum procedures and the inefficiencies of the reception system have gained public and political attention. While the Charter is known in Belgium and used in Belgian court decisions, overall awareness and use of it in judicial decisions still needs to be increased to better support fundamental rights in the context of these challenging situations in the country. We hope FAIR will help fill these gaps.”
“At VUB, the Fundamental Rights research centre (FRC) will be implementing the VUB’s tasks in the project. In our research team we have extensive experience with EU-funded projects and other research initiatives, especially in the fields of ‘migration and trafficking in human beings’, but also in ‘fundamental rights’ more broadly, which we are excited to apply to FAIR.”
Aim (What)
The project “EU Charter of Fundamental rights: Awareness raising and Instruments to promote a culture of Rights” (FAIR) proposes a two year set of awareness-raising and communication activities aimed at responding to the solicitation enshrined in the 2020 EU Commission “Strategy to strengthen the application of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the EU” to develop initiatives to promote people’s awareness of their Charter rights and of where to turn when their rights are breached, in particular by empowering local actors.
Methodology How)
The final output of the project is the development of a Toolbox of instruments – in English and in national languages – to organise and disseminate a communication campaign on fundamental rights in the selected countries, to be possibly replicated in all countries of the EU-27.
Impact (Why)
On grounds of the assessment of gaps and barriers in the implementation and use of the Charter at country level, the FAIR project will design and implement communication and awareness-raising activities addressing four key target groups:
1. civil-society organisations,
2. rights defenders,
3. justice professionals and
4. the general public
in order to foster community-building and the engagement of these stakeholders in the promotion and increased use of the Charter and, in the long-term , to nurture a culture of rights with the Charter at its core.