Visit of the High Commissioner to the Defender of Rights Jacques TOUBON

Anne Eastwood flew to Paris on 28 September 2015 to meet with her French counterpart, Jacques Toubon, as part of an amicable visit meant at building stronger links between the French and Monegasque human rights institutions. The High Commissioner was accompanied, during this visit, by her Deputy, Ms Cécile Vacarie-Bernard, who worked several years with the HALDE and the Defender of Rights, prior to joining the Monaco High Commissioner in 2014.

Topics discussed during this meeting included the idea of the High Commissioner and the Defender of Rights entering into a mutual assistance agreement in order to deal more efficiently with individual situations involving cross border issues, such as that of non-European citizens transferring their residence from Monaco to France, or that of retired workers claiming a French retirement pension after a mixed career in France and Monaco. To this end, further meetings will be scheduled in the near future with the territorial delegates of the Defender of Rights in the Département des Alpes-Maritimes, in order to start a special dialogue also on the local level.

This one day visit also included rewarding work sessions with the French institution’s services, focused on the discovery of the environment and working methods of the Defender of Rights in various fields of interest such as child protection and the fight against discrimination.
This visit takes the privileged collaboration between the French and Monaco human rights institutions a step further, after Ms. Angeli-Troccaz, Deputy to Jacques Toubon in charge of security ethics, traveled to Monaco last March to attend the inauguration of the High Commissioner by HSH Prince Albert II.

Jacques Toubon and Anne Eastwood are due to meet again shortly on the occasion of the 9th Congress of the AOMF which will be held in Quebec from 13 to 15 October 2015, and during which the Monaco High Commissioner should be admitted as a member of the Francophone Ombudsmans network.