Human rights considerations are still too often overlooked in lawmaking across the EU, finds a new report from the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). Despite the binding force of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, only a few EU Member States have guidelines to assess human rights impacts when implementing EU law. Even fewer explicitly reference the Charter in such guidelines. The report comes as the EU intensifies efforts to streamline its regulatory framework through “Omnibus” reforms to boost competitiveness. In this context, the report stresses that fundamental rights impact assessments are essential to protect people and ensure compliance with the law – without compromising the goals of simplification and efficiency.

The report Better legislation: Human rights impact assessment in lawmaking finds that impact assessments by EU countries rarely address the full spectrum of human rights. They tend to focus narrowly on areas such as equality, gender or data protection. Procedures vary widely between countries, policy areas, and ministries. As a result, laws may fall short of fundamental rights standards, exposing governments to legal risks and imposing wider societal costs.

At EU level, the European Commission requires fundamental rights checks for all legislative proposals. The report notes that these assessments are sometimes superficial or missing altogether. The lack of specialised expertise and limited involvement of independent human rights bodies further weakens the process.

FRA calls on the EU to:

• Ensure systematic and thorough application of fundamental rights impact assessments;
• increase the accessibility and inclusiveness of public consultations;
• consider independent external human rights expertise;
• support peer-learning between Member States to further improve their human rights impact assessment systems.

FRA calls on the EU Member States to:

• Develop coherent and comprehensive guidelines that explicitly use the Charter when legislating within the scope of EU law;
• use the EU-level human rights impact assessment as a starting point and complement it with a national impact assessment to address the national context;
• ensure high quality assessments through appropriate coordination, consultation and capacity building;
• ensure that ex-post evaluations become the rule and systematically consider human rights impacts.

The report draws on extensive desk research, expert consultations and field research conducted in Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Estonia, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and North Macedonia. The analysis incorporates input from international stakeholders and national human rights institutions, equality bodies, ombuds institutions, civil society organisations and academics.

FRA supports law- and policymakers by providing evidence, legal analysis and guidance on fundamental rights. The Agency helps ensure that fundamental rights are systematically considered in lawmaking across the EU, promoting more transparent, inclusive and rights-compliant legislation.