Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence: the Recent Proposal of the European Commission - Abstract

The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, known as the Istanbul Convention, is the most important international instrument containing rules requiring States which have ratified it to adopt internal provisions to prevent violence against women, to protect the victims and to punish those responsible. This Convention was signed by 34 countries although only 12 have ratified it. The European Union signed the Istanbul Convention on 13 June 2017 but has not yet completed the accession process, despite the fact that the European commitment to the protection and promotion of women's rights must be a priority of European action so that women can realize freely and safely their life projects within the European Union. Recently, the European Parliament adopted, by a large majority, a resolution (of 28 November 2019 on the EU’s accession to the Istanbul Convention and other measures to combat gender-based violence, P9_TA(2019)0080) calling on the European Council to complete the ratification of this Convention by the European Union and urging six Member States (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia) that have signed the Convention to ratify it without further delay. The need to prevent and combat violence against women, protecting victims and punishing offenders, was announced in President von der Leyen's Political Guidelines as a key priority of the European Commission and is part of the Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025. In this context, the European Commission recently proposed the introduction of rules to combat violence against women and domestic violence in the European Union (proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 March 2022 on combating violence against women and domestic violence, COM(2022) 105 final). In particular, the proposed directive would make it possible, on the one hand, to overcome the gaps existing in some Member States and, on the other hand, to standardise the various national legislations with a single discipline valid in all the countries of the European Union. This contribution aims to analyse the contents of the European Commission’s proposal by highlighting and reflecting on the key points.