VUB Research Group on Fundamental Rights and Constitutionalism (FRC) of the Faculty of Law and Criminology has been selected as the national contractor for FRANET, the multi-disciplinary research network of FRA, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights.
The VUB team will be led by Professor Paul De Hert (FRC Co-Director) and Professor Serge Gutwirth, with expertise from Professor Ilke Adam, Professor Els Dumortier, Professor Richard Lewis, Dr Rosamunde Van Brakel, Professor Stefaan Smis, and Amy Weatherburn.
Over the course of the next four years, VUB - FRC will be providing research services on nine key fundamental rights themes that are at the heart of the FRA’s work programme in relation to Belgium on:
- Access to justice;
- Asylum, migration & borders;
- Gender;
- Hate crime;
- Information society, privacy and data protection;
- LGBTI;
- People with disabilities;
- Racism & related intolerances;
- Rights of the child and Roma.
VUB-FRC has previously provided input to the FRA’s research including, Biometric data in large EU IT systems in the areas of borders, visa and asylum – fundamental rights implications, and the previous FRANET contract in 2011-2014 in cooperation with consultancy group Milieu Ltd.
In order to strengthen the multidisciplinary legal and social science expertise of the Belgian team, the VUB-FRC will be working closely with esteemed academics from ULB, University of Gent, University of Antwerp, and KU Leuven.
FRANET is the multidisciplinary research network of FRA, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, and is operational since 2011. It is composed of contractors in each EU Member State who, upon request, provide relevant data on fundamental rights issues to FRA, to facilitate the Agency’s comparative analyses.