ABSTRACT
The first director of FRA had to make many decisions in order to put flesh and blood to the skeleton offered by the founding Regulation. This chapter, authored by that first director, highlights some of the thinking, ideas, processes and challenges in determining the direction that the first 21st-century human rights institution should take. The Agency was keenly aware of the fact that the human rights institutional world already was populated with important mechanisms such as UN treaty bodies, Council of Europe bodies, national human rights institutions and many other actors. In this landscape the newly established agency had to ensure that it would add value to the protection of human rights, while avoiding overlapping with the work of existing institutions. The overarching approach for the Agency was synthesized to offer evidence-based advice to the EU institutions and Member States. The chapter offers an insight into how this approach has contributed to the development of important new human rights agendas in the EU.
