Context
The CARE Project - Citizens Consular Assistance Regulation in Europe is closely related to the European policy on the development and protection of rights of European citizens.
In particular its focus is on the right of European citizens to be provided with diplomatic and consular assistance in a third country. This right, established in Article 20 of the EC Treaty, needs to be strengthened: this requirement is reflected in recent documents of the Commission on this topic (the Green Paper “Diplomatic and consular protection of Union citizens in third countries” and the 2007-2009 Action Plan) and also in the European Parliament statements. According to Article 20, the legislations and practices of each country regarding its citizens receives major consideration based on the principle of equal treatment. In fact, it is explicitly established that Every citizen of the Union shall, in the territory of a third country in which the Member State of which he is a national is not represented, be entitled to protection by the diplomatic or consular authorities of any Member State, on the same conditions as the nationals of that State.
As the implementation of this right heavily depends on Member States, on how they ensure enforcement of the right of their citizens to receive diplomatic and consular assistance (and thus to all European citizens in fulfillment of the equal treatment principle), the Project intends to carry out a review of the current legislations on this subject in the 27 Member States. At the moment such review is still missing, so that its preparation has been considered by the Commission as one of the objectives to be attained during the period 2007-2009.
The availability of a clear and complete picture of the various national situations is important to strengthen the right established by the EC Treaty and by Article 46 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
 
Objectives
The Project’s aim is to provide a full picture of the regulations of the 27 Member States on diplomatic and consular assistance of their citizens in third countries. This allows the Commission to effectively carry out the set of initiatives planned in this area according to the 2007-2009 Action Plan. It also ensures that European citizens become fully aware of the conditions and rules governing the intervention of diplomatic and consular authorities of the Member States of the European Union in protecting them in third countries where their State is not represented.
All this perfectly fall within the aim of the Commission to promote the fundamental rights in the European Union and in particular those rights connected to European citizenship. This objective is extremely relevant as at the moment the acquis communautaire on this subject is very limited and Member States are likely to be far from guaranteeing it in a satisfactory way.

General description of the Project
The Project’s activities are carried out by a consortium of partners that have a special competence not only in the field of legal informatics and management of legal documentation, but also in national public law and European community law.
The partners’ commitment is to identify national correspondents covering all Member States of the European Union. The correspondents’ task is to review national legislations on diplomatic and consular protection, to collect the relevant legal documentation (possibly in digital format) and to deliver a Report structured according to a standardized format in English. The reports produced by each national correspondents are collected in an Interim Report; the selected legal documentation will be included in a database.
The Interim Report and a first version of the database will be presented at half stage of the Project. The Interim report will highlight the crucial questions which need to be carefully explored. Workshops and seminars will be organized to discuss specific topics. Parallel to this, the collection of documentation and development activities of the database will proceed. Particular consideration is given to the translation of texts from original languages (all European Union’s languages) into English and French. Taking into account the outcomes of workshops and seminars, a Final Report will be submitted at the end of the Project. Furthermore, the database of the documentation and the web site hosting it will be made available to the Commission.



Fig. 1 The Project’s activities carried out by the consortium

Expected results
The Project intends to achieve two main results.
The first and immediate result concerns awareness, that is the provision of an organic picture of legislations and doctrinal and judicial treatment of the topic.
The second outcome concerns methodology. A methodology is proposed in terms of human and technical resources which could be exploited to cover further subjects in the area of fundamental rights, where an exact and complete view of the legal framework is required.
In particular the project will produce:

• A Report considering the actual legal framework in the 27 countries, regarding all questions connected to diplomatic and consular assistance in third parties by exploring legislations and judicial decisions, and eventually policies and other administrative acts.
• A database of all legal documentation (legislation, general administrative acts, caselaw, policies). These documents will be translated into English and French.
• A web site, with a multilingual interface, providing database access via the Web. The site will be made available to all European citizens.