Carmen Calvo, accompanied by the Secretary of State for Equality, Soledad Murillo, and the General Director of Equality of Treatment and Diversity, Ignacio Sola, has had a first meeting with Michael O'Flaherty, director of the Agency for Fundamental Rights of the European Union (FRA) . The Agency, based in Vienna, was created in 2007 with the aim of offering help and advice to the Community institutions and Member States in order to guarantee and fully respect fundamental rights when they adopt measures or establish lines of action in their spheres of respective competence.Pool Moncloa / Borja Puig de la Bellacasa
The acting vice-president and the director have shared the challenges in terms of the protection of fundamental rights currently facing the European Union and the Member States. In this sense, they have addressed some of the projects not completed in the last legislature and which are of high interest in this area, such as the elaboration of an II Human Rights Plan or the proposed Law on Equality of treatment and non-discrimination.
Subsequently, Carmen Calvo met with Renato Zerbini, president of the Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights of the United Nations. The Committee is the body in charge of the supervision and interpretation of the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights of December 16, 1966. In the exercise of these functions, the Committee examines the States Parties making recommendations for improvement of regulations and public policies to comply with the Covenant and the rights enshrined therein.
Calvo and Zerbini have commented on the latest recommendations that the Committee has made to Spain. The vice president has explained the progress that has been made to comply with some of the recommendations of the Committee in the last year after the change of Government. In this regard, he has commented on the intense social agenda that the Government has had during the ten months of the legislature, highlighting some concrete measures such as the recovery of universal healthcare for immigrants regardless of their administrative situation, the rise in the minimum wage interprofessional, the decree law of measures on housing and rent or measures to facilitate equality between women and men in the workplace and employment.