The European Union is preparing to join the member states in signing up to the Council of Europe (COE) Convention against violence against women and domestic violence.
On Thursday 11 May, the Council of the EU adopted two decisions paving the way to the ratification of legal co-operation in criminal cases and asylum and non-refoulment.
The Istanbul Convention entered into force in August 2014. It recognises that violence against women is a human rights violation and it advocates measures to prevent it, protect the victims and pursue the perpetrators involved. So far, all the member states have signed this text but only 14 of them have ratified it (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden).
The EU’s accession seeks to ensure complementarity between national and Community levels and is expected to help the EU play a more effective role in international fora such as the COE’s Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO).
The two European Parliament rapporteurs, Anna Maria Corazza Bildt (EPP, Sweden) and Christine Revault d'Allonnes Bonnefoy (S&D, France) both welcomed this announcement. Ms Bildt, however, regretted that, “the EU’s accession is only limited to very restricted areas of the Convention”, such as shared responsibility. The resolution adopted by the European Parliament on 24 November 2016 called for the EU accession to be, “on a broad and unequivocal basis” (see EUROPE 11675).
The European Parliament still has to adopt these two decisions for the EU’s accession to become effective. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean and Véronique Leblanc)