FRANET – contractors for the EU Fundamental Rights Agency

FRANET is the multidisciplinary research network of the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA).

It is composed of contractors in each EU Member State who, upon request, provide relevant data to FRA on fundamental rights issues, to facilitate the Agency’s comparative analyses.

Between 2014-2018 and since 2023, aditus foundation has been acting as national contractor for reporting to the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA). We have been gathering technical and detailed national human rights data and information, through desk-based research, and interviews with governmental and non-governmental stakeholders and practitioners.

Our reports join those produced by the other FRANET members in the other EU Member States, to feed into FRA’s high-quality comparative publications covering an extremely broad range of human rights themes.

These are published on a regular basis are relied upon by policy-makers, national Parliaments, the EU institutions, civil society organisations, academia and so many more stakeholders! For us, they are also key advocacy documents we use in our public education activities and in our dialogue with stakeholders in our efforts at strengthening fundamental rights in Malta.

We are delighted to have been awarded this significant responsibility by the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights. It confirms the excellence of our work, and our commitment to research-based policy- and law-making.

Neil Falzon, aditus foundation Director

Themes we’ve researched so far include:

Fundamental Rights: challenges and achievements in 2014 – Annual Report | Terrorist attacks in Paris | Return/transfer of children at risk, who are EU nationals | Biometric data in large EU IT-systems in the areas of borders, visa and asylum | The right to interpretation and translation and the right to information in criminal proceedings | Fundamental rights issues in the context of border management and return | Migrants and their descendants: social inclusion and participation in society | Rehabilitation and mutual recognition in the context of transfer of persons sentenced or awaiting trial | The right to independent living of persons with disabilities | National intelligence authorities and surveillance | Migration detention of children | Age requirements in respect to the rights of the child | Access to justice for victims of crime | Protection of media professionals.