The Polish Minister of Justice, Zbigniew Ziobro, confirmed on Monday 27 July his intention to request his country’s withdrawal from the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, or the Istanbul Convention. A letter to this effect was sent to the Polish Ministry of Family Affairs on Monday.
Mr Ziobro had informed the press of this project as early as Saturday 25 July, deploring the presence in this text of “elements of an ideological nature” considered to be “harmful”.
This is a view he had already expressed when the Convention, signed by Warsaw in 2012 and ratified by Poland in 2015, entered into force. At the time, Mr Ziobro described the text, now signed and ratified by 34 of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe and 21 of the 27 EU Member States, as a “feminist invention to justify gay ideology” (see EUROPE 12379/19).
“Alarming announcements”
As early as Sunday 26 July, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Marija Pejčinović Burić, described the Polish Minister’s announcements as “alarming”.
This Convention is “the Council of Europe’s key international treaty to combat violence against women and domestic violence – and that is its sole objective. If there are any misconceptions or misunderstandings about the Convention, we are ready to clarify them in a constructive dialogue”, she said in a statement.
The European Commissioner for Equality, Helena Dalli, said on her Twitter account that “such decisions would be deeply regrettable” (see EUROPE 12464/23). A spokesperson for the institution said on Monday that EU ratification of the Convention remained “a priority for this Commission” (see EUROPE 12440/7).
Legal and moral obligation
Several political parties in turn condemned the Polish announcements on Monday. Zita Gurmai, President of PES Women, the gender equality arm of the Party of European Socialists, said that the Polish government, “bound by EU treaties and policies”, remained legally and morally obliged to protect victims of gender-based violence.
“Using the fight against the Istanbul Convention as an instrument to try to display conservative ‘values’ is a pitiful and pathetic move that must be firmly sanctioned”, the president of the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament, Dacian Cioloș.
Poland, however, is not alone on this line. Hungary and the Slovak Republic, which have signed the Istanbul Convention but are blocking its ratification (see EUROPE 12481/15), use the same arguments as their Polish neighbour.
Indeed, Viktor Orbán considers that the text carries “a destructive ideology of gender”. As for the Slovak government, it accuses it of being a threat to traditional family structures. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki and Véronique Leblanc)