While the European Commission is preparing an initiative to combat gender-based violence and violence against women in particular (see EUROPE 12653/16), the European Parliament, for its part, began its legislative work on Monday 22 February on an own-initiative report on the consequences of domestic violence and custody rights for women and children.
The MEPs Luisa Regimenti (ID, Italy) and Elena Kountoura (The Left, Greece), in charge of this dossier, presented their draft report to the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) and the Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) of Parliament.
The text places particular emphasis on the issue of access rights and custody of children in the event of separation.
“Too often, in violence cases, the default rule of joint custody is applied without taking into account the violent behaviour of one of the parents”, Mrs Regimenti summarized. Two realities that are “clearly incompatible“, she insisted.
While recognising “that in principle, shared custody and unsupervised visits are desirable in order to ensure that parents enjoy equal rights”, the draft report therefore stresses the need, in situations of domestic violence, to systematically award sole custody of children to the non-violent partner.
In order for the situation to change in this direction, the two women MEPs call, among other things, in their report for “mandatory targeted training for judicial and law enforcement officers about domestic violence and its mechanisms”, including psychological violence.
They also call for these officers to have “adequate skills to enable them to assess the situation using reliable risk assessment tools” and recommend that Member States set up specialised Courts.
Member States and the Commission are also asked to provide “gender-segregated and comparable EU-wide data” on the causes, consequences and management of domestic violence and custody rights.
View the report: https://bit.ly/3dOQSfp (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)