Strasbourg, 25/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament has called on the European Commission to present a European action plan to fight all forms of violence against women and girls. The MEPs adopted the own-initiative report by Antonyia Parvanova (ALDE, Bulgaria) on this issue by show of hands on Tuesday 25 February. The report contains various recommendations, in light of the fact that between 20 and 25 out of every 100 European women suffer physical violence at least once in their lives.
The MEPs are calling for a “European Year” to fight violence against women to be decreed in the next three years, ahead of this action plan. They also call for the European Commission to present measures by the end of the year to encourage the member states to act to prevent violence. In order to create adequate policies to stop violence against women, the MEPs note the importance of collecting coherent statistical data within the EU. They call on the Commission to revise the regulation on the European statistics on this issue. The European Parliament also calls on the Commission and the member states to punish “feminicide” and to combat crimes of honour by means of education and protecting potential victims. (MD/transl.fl)