News

On September 19 Social Platform had its first unique occasion to jointly meet with the Heads of the European Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) and Eurofound. We invited Ms Virginija Langbakk (Director for EIGE), Mr Morten Kjaerum (Director of the FRA) and Ms Erika Mezger (Deputy Director of Eurofound).

Background

Social Platform and our members make use of all the three agencies highly valuable and relevant research, data and reports they produce and their collective work matches our six strategic objectives. We have a long-standing relationship with FRA, by annual meetings with the Director as well as our, and our members', participation in FRA’s Platform meetings and other events. With EIGE we have established a relationship in the last year and already met with the institute in Vilnius during our networking visit to Lithuania and future occasions are foreseen. We have been invited by Eurofound to speak and participate in their conferences but this is the first occasion where we met with the three agencies together, and the first time that the three Heads came together at an event.

Presentation by the agencies

Eurofound: Ms Mezger explained how Eurofound is set up as an EU Agency with a tri-partite Governing Board through its Founding Regulation. The three Groups – social partners, member states and the Commission – are therefore more than ‘consultative stakeholders’, they are part of the governance structure. Ms Mezger highlighted some of the areas of work for 2013-2014 of interest for Social Platform members (such as e.g. issues of job creation in the health sector, sustainable working conditions, inequalities in work, impact of the crisis and mobility and migration.) Even if civil society organisations are not a part of the consultative stakeholders Social Platform is welcome to give input to their work programme and Eurofound.

FRA: Mr Kjaerum welcomed new ideas on how to create a meaningful consultation with civil society. He informed how the Council is reviewing the Agencies regulation based on a recent evaluation and encourages Social Platform to support the Agency by putting forward our vision on what they shall work on in the future. Today the EU consists of more than 40 different agencies and there is a powerful coordination between them on all levels (heads, communication, working groups etc.), the agencies collectively make up 20% of all the EU staff. FRA will have the Presidency of the agencies next year and Mr Kjaerum’s objective is to create a better narrative and visibility of how they contribute and how their data can be made more visible and widely shared. Key areas for FRA will be on hate crime with a conference in November (bringing together all findings on e.g. anti-Semitism, LGBT, VAW). The agency will also launch its violence against women (VAW) report in 2014, on disability they will launch a report on legal capacity and on children, and two big flagship survey’s on ethnic minorities and one on the majority population.

EIGE: EIGE started in June 2010 and is one of the youngest and smallest ageniesy, explained Ms Langbakk. They work with gender analysis, political and societal change and awareness through dissemination of information etc. EIGE don’t work with legal aspects on how directives are being implemented (e.g. the way FRA is). EIGE has developed a Gender Equality Index to measure the gender gap from six dimensions on EU policies and comparing  between different groups, such as e.g. based on age in relation to gender. They also have a vast resource centre on gender equality available in different languages. EIGE is preparing a plan for gender-based violence. The institute also reviews selected areas for the Council (for the Greek Presidency it’s on Women and Economy). Ms Langbakk encouraged Platform members to take part in their virtual network for online debates.

Social Platform's proposal for a joint project by the agencies

Pierre Baussand (Director) presented our vision for closer cooperation between the agencies which would help us explain the inter-linkages between our areas of work but also to trigger a debate in the member states and make the case to the Commission why their work also needs to be complementary. We presented a proposal for a joint pilot project resulting in a joint publication on access to employment – it would build on a topic that falls within the priorities of all three agencies and where already available data and research can be exchanged to demonstrate the added value of the agencies and contribute to their visibility. It would show that the issue of access to employment relates to access to services (e.g. housing, health care, transport etc.) as well as to characteristics such as gender, disabilities, social status, age etc.

Eurofound: Access to employment and services is a part of Eurofound’s core business. Ms Mezger admits that given the difficulties in following the numerous activities of the sister agencies, Eurofound have introduced a structured process to keep each other informed. This includes the possibility to define joint activities on an annual basis, if and where this is considered useful and possible from a resources point of view. She called for a clarification on what assessment we are looking for and proposed a first exchange between experts in the field from the respective agencies focusing on findings and implementation.

FRA: Mr Kjaerum expressed his openness to further exploring how to tailor our proposal on what each part can bring. Another related area, requested to FRA by DG Justice is on the right to conduct business, including issues such as access to loans for e.g. ethnic minorities etc.

EIGE: Ms Langbakk stressed that whatever joint project it would be, we need a focused scope and statistics by themselves don’t show the full picture of gender inequalities without a context of history, culture etc. Complementary qualitative data is needed, e.g. to understand who doesn’t access housing and why (e.g. single women being denied housing due to baby)