8.4.2020

The EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) has published a report on the impact of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on fundamental rights across the EU Member States.

The report Coronavirus pandemic in the EU: fundamental rights implications looks at the measures EU Member States use to address the pandemic to highlight rights-respectful approaches that other Member States can learn from. It focuses on four issues underlining the need to carefully and regularly assess the impact on people’s fundamental rights as governments react to the ever-developing pandemic. These issues are: 1) impact on daily life; 2) impact on particular vulnerable groups; 3) discrimination and racism; and 4) disinformation and data protection. The report shows that government measures to combat COVID-19 have profound implications for everybody’s fundamental rights, including the right to life and to health.

This is the first in a series of four monthly reports on the impact of the Coronavirus disease across the EU Member States. It looks at the impact of government measures in place in February and March 2020.

FRA’s multidisciplinary research network, FRANET, collected the data across all 27 EU Member States. It gathered information from sources in the public domain at the time of data collection. The Institute for Human Rights at Åbo Akademi University, together with the Faculty of Law at the University of Turku, currently form the national focal point of FRANET in Finland. The researchers at the Institute for Human Rights at Åbo Akademi University have compiled the country report on Finland.