INNOVATIONS OF THE MANDATE OF THE AGENCY FOR FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (hereinafter FRA) pro-motes fundamental rights with data and research, advises and helps the EU institu-tions and Member States, when they apply Union Law, while favoring communica-tion and awareness campaigns. Since its creation by Council Regulation (EC) No 168/2007, the FRA addresses a wide variety of issues in its reports, conclusions and opinions that affect children's rights, anti-Semitism, non-discrimination and equality, gender violence, the situation of the gypsies, hate crimes, the rights of migrants or ar-tificial intelligence, among many others. The new Regulation (EU) No 2022/555 of the Council incorporates the modifications proposed by the European Commission in 2020 with the purpose of improving the efficiency, relevance and governance of the FRA. The need to accommodate the scope of the FRA's competences to Union law and to adapt its procedures to those standardized for the rest of the EU agencies were the reasons that led to the introduction of specific technical-legal modifications in the founding Regulation. The purpose of this article is to analyze whether such innovations are suited to achieve an effective and efficient mechanism required to provide the FRA with the adequate agility and skill to respond to the contemporary challenges in the field of fundamental rights.