The European Parliament deplores the delay in the EU's ratification process of the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. It intends to ask the EU Court of Justice on Thursday, 4 April to overturn the arguments put forward by the Member States behind the blockage.
The Istanbul Convention entered into force in August 2014 to end violence against women. It has since been signed by all Member States, but seven of them (Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom) have not yet ratified it. The same is true for the EU, which has signed the text (and therefore expressed its intention to become a party to the text), but has not ratified it (and is therefore not legally bound). Discussions are said to be blocked in the EU Council over procedural issues (how to vote? what to do with States that have not ratified the text? etc.).
“Some Member States, led by Poland and Hungary, are putting forward unfounded legal arguments that are only intended to slow down the ratification negotiations”, Christine Revault d'Allonnes-Bonnefoy (S&D, France) told EUROPE. “It is a smokescreen, a legal front that hides a glaring lack of political will to protect women from the violence they face in Europe”, she continued.
Fearing that the dossier would disappear from the agenda of the next Parliament and that the EU Council would stand by its positions, the European Parliament is expected to vote, at its plenary session, on a resolution asking the Court about the compatibility of the accession proposals with the Treaties. Like the decisions authorising the signature, these proposals are based on two separate parts (and therefore two legal bases), namely judicial cooperation in criminal matters and asylum and non-refoulement, on which the EU has exclusive competence. This breach is widely used by the Member States and one which the Parliament would like some legal clarifications on. The draft resolution can be consulted at: https://bit.ly/2YLQswk. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)