ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that rights indicators act as techniques of regulation and control that help shape the global rights identity of the EU. It also argues that through the development of fundamental rights indicators by the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), the EU is promoting global governmentality by rights through a good governance agenda and that this reveals how a global image of itself as a virtuous international human rights actor is able to be represented. The chapter focuses on the move towards developing indicators for measuring rights in the EU, and the implications that this has for the EUs identity as a virtuous global human rights actor. It highlights the features of the indicators on the rights of the child and on violence against women that make it possible to identify processes of governmentality at work in the FRA/EU rights model. The chapter problematizes indicators as tools of governing behaviour and questions the resultant virtuous global rights actor image.
