The members of the European Parliament are concerned at the limited effects of Directive 2011/99/EU on European protection decisions. On Tuesday 27 February, the committees on women's rights and civil liberties voted to adopt the report by Soraya Post (S&D, Sweden) and Teresa Jiménez-Becerril Barrio (EPP, Spain).
Readers may recall that the 2011 directive allows victims of violence, in particular domestic violence and harassment, to benefit from a protection measure against their attacker when they travel to another EU country. It entered into force on 11 January 2011 and is supposed to have been applied in all member states (with the exception of Ireland and Denmark) since 11 January 2015.
However, the MEPs consider that the member states and the Commission have not done their duty. They deplore the fact that in January 2015, only seven European protection decisions were issued, compared to the thousands of national protection decisions made in recent years. The MEPs stressed that the enormous range of different protection orders in the member states and the different legal systems (for instance, the fact that harassment is not recognised as a criminal act in all EU countries) have created obstacles to European protection decisions. At the same time, they regret the fact that the Commission did not report to the Parliament and Council on the application of the directive until 11 January 2016, as scheduled. They call upon it to meet its reporting obligations, monitor the application of the directive and take infringement proceedings against member states that are not complying with it. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)