ABSTRACT
When it was established in 2007, after three years of extensive debate, FRA was defined as a pole of expertise on fundamental rights issues, rather than as a monitoring body. This chapter recalls the context in which its mandate was defined. The definition of the mission of the Agency was largely inspired by the role formerly played by the EU Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), to which FRA was to succeed. But it was also an answer to the fears expressed by the Council of Europe institutions, which were concerned that the EU would be performing for the Member States a function already fulfilled by the Council of Europe’s monitoring bodies, at the risk of creating an overlap, and a competition, between the two European organisations. The question is now whether the separation between providing ‘assistance and expertise relating to fundamental rights’ for the EU institutions and for the EU Member States implementing Union law, on the one hand, and ‘monitoring compliance’ with fundamental rights, on the other hand, even if tenable in theory, can be maintained in practice. And it is whether, in the very different context created by the emergence of self-proclaimed ‘illiberal democracies’ in the EU, that the original mandate of the Agency should be revisited.
