… it says at the top of this page (click on Negotiated Procedure for EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in Poems to get to it).

(Update: Link’s not working. Here’s the home page.)

We’re at the website of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, whose function is to

provide the relevant institutions and authorities of the Community and its Member States when implementing Community law with assistance and expertise relating to fundamental rights in order to support them when they take measures or formulate courses of action within their respective spheres of competence to fully respect fundamental rights.

The guy who runs FRA also thought it would be a good idea to have a poetry contest.

The FRA is looking to contract a poet or other experienced individual (or group of individuals), or organisation, to devise a poetic composition based on the articles of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, along with the organisation of an accompanying performance.

This “Charter in Poems” (working title) should be composed in English (literary language). The piece will then be performed at the Fundamental Rights Conference 2010, to take place in Brussels on 7 December. This performance should be approximately 80 minutes in length, and should be supported by multimedia elements and/or other artistic performances (dance, music, etc.). It should be a group performance that reflects the diversity of the EU.

EIGHTY MINUTES OF POETRY ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS. That’s almost an hour and a half of people singing and dancing to the tune of balanced and sustainable development and [the] free movement of persons, services, goods and capital, and the freedom of establishment.

The Justice Commissioner is pissed. That’s why FRA has had to close the negotiated procedure.

Justice commissioner Viviane Reding has killed off plans to recast the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as an 80-minute-long epic poem.

Concerned about what she viewed as a frivolous waste of time and money, Ms Reding, who is also responsible for fundamental rights and citizenship, has written a tersely worded letter seen by EUobserver to the director of the Fundamental Rights Agency, Morten Kjoerum, lambasting the plans.

“The language of the charter is already clear and direct,” she wrote. “I do not therefore see what is to be gained by running the initiative you have in mind in order to promote its accessibility to citizens. I rather see the counterproductive risk that the dignity of the charter is undermined.”

“This initiative does not provide the added value that is expected from the agency and is not in line with its mandate,” she continued, demanding to know how much time and money had been spent on the poetry plans.

… It is understood that the commissioner was surprised when she read about the agency’s poem project. “It just came out of leftfield. She thought: ‘Is this really how they should be spending their time?” said one EU official.

Ms Reding however said the idea was beyond the mandate of the agency and that it should stick to its main job of analysing the human and civil rights situation in the EU…