Policy Voices | EU Agency for Fundamental Right’s Director: “You cannot have rights-free zones when the EU is taking action”

In today’s episode of Policy Voices, host Catarina Vila Nova sits down with Sirpa Rautio, the Director of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). In this wide ranging interview on the state of fundamental rights in the EU, they talk everything from migration and asylum, DEI, security and defence, competitiveness, justice and the rule of law.

They spoke just a few days after FRA published a landmark position paper on the creation of “return hubs” in non-EU countries for migrants who have been ordered to leave the EU. Sirpa Rautio warns that, where the “EU is taking action, you cannot have rights-free zones”. “We cannot accept that people are abused or mistreated, deported or returned, without adequate legal safeguards and without knowing their rights”, she said.

On the rule of law, FRA’s Director still trusts the “fairly strong infrastructures and legal frameworks in place” in the EU. The same cannot be said about the efforts to make the bloc more competitive vis-à-vis the United States. Here, Sirpa Rautio warned against rolling back commitments already made.

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