EU rights agencies lack teeth, report says - Main contents

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Equality agencies, national human rights institutions and data protection authorities across Europe often lack resources, are not sufficiently independent from governments and have mandates that are too weak to be able to fulfill their role of protecting citizens, the EU i's Fundamental Rights Agency i has warned.

In a series of four reports the agency itself describes as "shocking" issued on Friday, the FRA has called upon the European Union and its member states to provide additional support to such bodies.

"[These bodies] need to be equipped with the resources, authority and independence to function effectively," said Morten Kjaerum, the director of the FRA.

Focussing on growing concerns about date privacy amongst European citizens, he added:"If data protection authorities do not have the power to take action against those who infringe that right, we run the risk that the right becomes meaningless."

The agency singled out Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands and Poland as states where "prosecutions and sanctions for violations of data protection law are limited or non-existent."

In many countries, data protection institutions do not have the power to investigate complaints, to launch legal action or to force anyone to respect their decisions.

The FRA also underscored the need for rights bodies to be fully independent from government to be able to maintain the trust of citizens.

"The lack of independence from the government of several of the data protection authorities in the EU presents a major problem for their credibility," the agency said.

The FRA highlighted Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ireland, and the UK, as EU member states where the lack of data protection authority independence from the capital was a problem.

The Vienna-based EU agency also released a survey that showed that individuals for the most part were completely unaware that there were rights bodies in their countries created to take up their cases.

Some 72 percent of EU citizens are unaware of the existence of a national data protection authority in their country.

"[There is] a general unawareness of fundamental rights and shockingly low levels of reporting of discrimination among immigrant and ethnic minority groups," agency spokesman Friso Roscam-Abbing told EUobserver.

The agency further found that there was a lack of awareness of EU racial equality legislation. although this was more pronounced amongst employers than amongst employees.

One of the reports also noted that discrimination against the Roma is often not seen as racial discrimination, quoting an unnamed representative of a Lithuanian employers' organisation as indicative of the issue: "The problem in Lithuania is about the ‘Roma species' as we call them here. They simply don't want to work ... they don't want to learn; they don't want to respect the country's laws."