A Missed Opportunity: The Fundamental Rights Agency and the Euro Area Crisis

• Date: 01 January 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/eulj.12166
• Author: Alicia Hinarejos
• Published date: 01 January 2016

A Missed Opportunity: The Fundamental

Rights Agency and the Euro Area Crisis

Alicia Hinarejos*

Abstract: This paper focuses on the role played by the Agency for Fundamental Rights in

the wake of the euro area crisis. The Agency was created as part of a wider trend towards a

broader, more pro-active strategy for the protection of fundamental rights that includes

administrative and political rights promotion as a complement to judicial enforcement. In

the context of the euro crisis, however, the Agency has not been able to fulfil this role. This

paper will analyze the reasons for this missed opportunity, as well as its consequences. It

will argue that the sidelining of the Agency in this area is due to the confluence of two

factors: on the one hand, the Agency’s lack of discretion in setting its own agenda; and,

on the other, the predominance of the executive, and resulting resurgence of intergovern-

mentalism, that have been a feature of post-crisis developments.

Ultimately, this paper argues that the sidelining of the Agency in this context is an unfor-

tunate result, given the magnitude of the political debate in this area and the valuable role

that the Agency might have played or could still play in informing it.

I Introduction

This paper focuses on the role—or rather, lack thereof—played by the European Union

Agency for Fundamental Rights in the wake of the euro area crisis. The Agency was

created as a source of expertise and advice, both for the institutions of the EU and

for its Member States, in the protection and promotion of fundamental rights. It is part

of a wider trend towards a broader, more pro-active strategy for the protection of

fundamental rights that includes administrative and political rights promotion as a

complement to judicial enforcement. In the context of the euro area crisis, however,

the Agency has not been able to fulfil this valuable role. This paper will analyse the

reasons for this missed opportunity, as well as its consequences.

After this brief introduction, Section 2 will provide an overview of the genesis of the

Agency, locating it within the wider context of independent human rights bodies across

the world, as well as of a trend within the EU towards a broader strategy for the protection

and promotion of fundamental rights. The purpose of this exercise is to illuminate the

potential value of the Agency’s role as a counterbalance to the political institutions and a

complement to judicial enforcement. Unfortunately, however, the Agency has not been

able to fulfil that role in monitoring and promoting fundamental rights in the context of

the developments that followed the euro area crisis. Section 3 will investigate the different

* Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge. I am grateful to the editors of this special issue, Catherine

Barnard, and Agustín José Menéndez for their comments. All errors remain my own.

European Law Journal, Vol. 22, No. 1, January 2016, pp. p. 61–73.

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