Ten years after its creation, the Agency has matured into a unique, independent and trusted centre of excellence on fundamental rights, according to the findings of FRA’s second independent external evaluation. This enables it to offer practical hands-on support drawn from its set of robust evidence-based advice.

Optimity, an independent external evaluator, held over 250 interviews in 2017 and surveyed FRA’s key partners and stakeholders. Questions were asked about relevance of the agency’s work, its effectiveness, usefulness and impact, added value, coherence and efficiency.

Some of the key conclusions from the evaluation include:

EU and national stakeholders find the Agency’s work highly relevant to their own work and the majority feel that its mandate should be extended to cover police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters.

The quality of the Agency’s research outputs was undisputed and stakeholders praised it for providing comparable scientific, objective EU-wide fundamental rights data.

The Agency is valued for its unique contribution to promoting and protecting fundamental rights through its socio-legal analysis, evidence-based advice as well as its communications and awareness raising activities.

The coordination and cooperation with all key stakeholders were assessed very positively.

The Agency works efficiently but to continue to respond effectively to the increasing demands being placed on it more staff would be needed.

In December 2017, FRA’s Management Board received Optimity’s final evaluation report and agreed a set of recommendations to the European Commission. These recommendations suggested extending FRA’s mandate to cover police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters. They also recommended ensuring the Agency has adequate resources to effectively meet the pressing need for robust fundamental rights support.

The European Commission sent the evaluation report, together with the Board’s recommendations, to the European Parliament, Council of the EU, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. On the basis of the evaluation and the recommendations, the Commission may submit any proposals for amendments to FRA’s Founding Regulation.