European Civil Society and the EU Fundamental Rights Agency: Creating Legitimacy through Civil Society Inclusion?

Abstract

With the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, the European Union (EU) now possesses advanced human rights institutions such as the binding Charter of Fundamental Rights and a Fundamental Rights Agency. The rights agency, created as an institutional enhancement providing rights assessments to the EU and member states while conducting dialogue with civil society organizations, aims at safeguarding and promoting the rights of residents in the Union. Based on interview and survey data, this article analyzes the degree of input- and output-legitimacy of the EU’s participatory rights regime, with a particular focus on the agency’s interaction with civil society. It is argued that while such cooperation optimizes human rights attainment in a transnational manner, it is simultaneously being constrained by its embeddedness in the agency, which in turn has to mitigate demands by member states, the EU institutions and the claims of CSOs.