about human and european consultancy

Our tender for the provision of reports and studies on legal issues concerning the promotion and protection of fundamental rights in the European Union was very successful.

From the 24 countries for which we did submit a tender proposal we ended up as first ranking for 20 of them. Plus we won the contract for the international lot, meant to draft reports on the European and international situation and to draft comparative reports across the EU countries. The contracts were signed at the end of last week.

The project will have a flying start. A kick-off meeting with the senior experts from all EU countries will take place in Vienna next Tuesday and the request for a first thematic report came in already. Very exiting !

This will accelerate the pace in which we intended to introduce a new content management system to communicate with our experts internationally through the Internet, for which we have chosen the ECM system Alfresco.

My blog has been silent for a while. It was not just the holiday period, actually the opposite. We were never so busy with the preparation of tender proposals than during the last months.

The European Commission did launch several tenders in the area in which we are working and we did submit proposals for two of them. One contract aims at the organisation of exchange of good practices on gender equality. The other one has the objective to establish an Academic Network of European Disability experts.
The European Union Agency for Human Rights did launch a tender for the Provision of reports and studies on legal issues concerning the promotion and protection of fundamental rights in the European Union. The tender did include seperate lots for each of the 27 EU member states and one lot for reports on the situation at european and international level. We did submit proposals for 24 out of the 27 countries plus the international lot.

We expect an increasing workload and have opened filled a job position for a project coordinator for our EU-wide multi-country projects at our office in Utrecht. The profile for this position can be downloaded here.

We can celebrate the 5th issue of our European Anti-discrimination Law Review. Including articles on Discrimination by Association, Legal Standing, ECRI's view on Challenges for the Non-discrimination Directives and the UN convention on Disability. This issue can be downloaded in english, german and french and printed copies can be ordered by email to review@non-discrimination.net.

The European Anti-discrimination Law Review was developed during the 3 years contract which we, Human European Consultancy, did carry out in partnership with the Migration Policy Group. National experts from the EU member states provided information on the transposition of the Non-discrimination Directives and developing case law. A group of experts covering the five discrimination grounds did review this information and a board of directors did provide strategic direction and did supervise the drafting of a number of thematic reports, all published on the Commission website. An independent evaluation last year gave the network a positive rating.

Our contract is coming to an end this July, but the Commission did launch an open call for tender for the continuation of this network, for which we did of course submit a proposal. We hope to be awarded with this new contract so that we can show how we can publicise developments in european anti-discrimination law even better.

Today the European Commission launched an online public consultation on anti-discrimination measures at EU and Member State level:

All the Member States had to bring their national legislation into line with these two Directives. According to a recent study for the Commission, the legislation in some Member States goes well beyond the minimum required under the Directives, so that, for example, gay, disabled or older people are protected from discrimination when they go to a bar or restaurant, or if they buy things or services, or rent a flat. But this is not the case in most Member States, with the result that different groups have different levels of protection. The question on which the Commission would like your views is whether this situation causes a real problem, if that is acceptable, and if not, what would be the best way to tackle it.

The 'recent study' mentioned here is the mapping study which we did carry out for the Commission during 2006. While this study initially was not meant to be publicised, it is rewarding to see that its results do play such a prominent role in the regulatory impact assessment the Commission is carrying out for possible supplementary legislation in this area.

 

The website of the European Commission, DG Employment, Social affairs & Equal Opportinities, has a monthly focus on a theme. The month of July their spotlight is on new anti-discrimination and diversity management training. The project, which we currently carry out in the EU member states, Turkey, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway is highlighted, including the seminar for national Diversity Management trainers organised in June.

Briefing session in Cologne, where we had brought together the trainers who will facilitate a national seminar on Diversity Management in each of the EU member states and Turkey in our Anti-discrimination and Diversity training project.

This is the subject of a tender, launced by the Research Directorate General (Science, economy and society) of the European Commission, for which we did submit a proposal last week in cooperation with the Centre for Gender and Diversity, University of Maastricht. The tender with the official title ‘Meta-analysis of gender and science research’ aims at collecting and analysing gender and science research carried out since 1980 in EU countries and States associated with the Seventh Framework Programme (altogether 33 countries).

The purpose of this study is to collect and analyse gender and science research on the following topics:
a) horizontal segregation in research careers: this covers the issue of choice of scientific subjects by girls and occupational choices by women, the perception and attractiveness of Science Engineering and Technology (SET), the causes underlying these choices (e.g. stereotypes, influence of family and role models, etc.),the causes of success and failure at university level, etc.
b) vertical segregation: this topic covers the barriers for women to reach top scientific positions (”glass ceiling” or “sticky floor”), mentoring / tutoring initiatives, etc.
c) the underlying causes and effects of these two aspects, including work-life balance issues, pay gap, mobility-related obstacles, dual careers, evidence of discrimination, working culture, stereotypes etc.

With a team of 4 persons we worked close together during a couple of weeks to design this research project and to select a group of highly qualified experts to cover countries and aspects of this research, which should steer policy-making on gender and research in the years to come and which should define future research priorities within the Seventh Framework Programme. We are satisfied with the result; we hope the evaluation commission for this tender will conclude that this is how they would like to have it implemented.

Last week I attended one of the Train the Trainers seminars we carry out these days in our Anti-discrimination and Diversity training project. This one was organised in Vienna for a group of trainers from Germany, Italy and Austria. The group was very dynamic and motivated and I enjoyed the interaction between participants and the international trainers.
The program was a mix of content related to the role of NGOs and trade unions in the context of national anti-discrimination legislation (making use of a training manual as we did develop in an ealier project and published by the European Co