Croatia has received the green light from the European Commission to enter the border-free Schengen Area, but nine organisations and initiatives working with the victims of border violence have made their objections clear.

Today the European Parliament will start its series of commissioner hearings, grilling all the nominees to the College of Commissioners. Here are the hearings that matter most for rights, democracy and the rule of law.

After the recent failure of the Romanian Police to locate a kidnapped teenage girl, who, after calling 112 three times, was raped and murdered, authorities now want to ask for ID cards from people buying mobile phone top-up cards.

​The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and the Forum for Human Rights intervened in a case before the European Court of Human Rights. The case concerns a boy with special educational needs who experienced discrimination at a public school in Romania.

The Hungarian government is waging a propaganda war against Finland in order to undermine the latter's credibility when the EU resumes Article 7 proceedings against Hungary.

The justice system in Romania seemed stacked against people who can't afford a private lawyer, as court appointed counsel are blocked from serving their clients properly.

The Romanian government has implemented less than half of what it promised to do in relation to prisons, which are still overcrowded. It has only managed to modernise and reduce overcrowding in pre-trial detention.

CIVICUS Monitor update on Romania - July 2019

The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, together with the Association for Legal Intervention, presented an amicus curiae brief on the expulsion of foreigners identified as a threat to security to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights.

The video that brought down Austria's government was devastating, but it was far from an isolated incident. Instead, it points to a much larger problem that exists across Europe.