Consulted by Latvian Minister of Justice Inese Lībiņa-Egnere, the Venice Commission published an opinion on Tuesday 16 December on Latvia’s draft law to withdraw from the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, known as the Istanbul Convention.
Such a withdrawal is “legally authorised”, the Council of Europe’s constitutional law experts point out, but it must be “carefully justified, consistent with democratic principles and the Rule of law, and mindful of the potential consequences for the protection of human rights”.
This last point implies that the groups concerned should be consulted and that impact studies should be carried out, which was not done under the urgency procedure implemented by Saeima, the Latvian parliament.
The opinion emphasises the role played by GREVIO, the monitoring body responsible for verifying the convention’s implementation in the state parties and at the level of the European Union, which ratified the convention in June 2023.
The 2024 European directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence, which the Latvian parliament refers to as more effective than the Istanbul Convention, does not conceptualise such violence as a form of discrimination, the opinion states, adding that it only proposes “minimum standards focused on selected offences”.
Complementary to, but limited to, the EU’s competences, it “cannot match the depth, breadth or monitoring mechanism” of the Council of Europe Convention, which covers both prevention and prosecution, as the Latvian Ministry of Justice had already emphasised.
The Venice Commission says it is ready to assist the Latvian authorities, recommending that they consider withdrawal only as a last resort and “make full use of GREVIO’s expertise”.
As a reminder: Latvia ratified the Istanbul Convention in 2023, but attached to the instrument of ratification a controversial declaration stating that “the term ‘gender’ included in the convention shall not be considered to be relating to an obligation to introduce any other understanding of sex (women and men) in the legal and educational system of the Republic of Latvia and shall not impose an obligation to interpret the norms and values established in the Constitution”.
On 24 September, 14 members of Saeima presented a draft law on withdrawing from the convention, prepared by members of the opposition party Latvia First.
On 7 October, the cabinet of ministers opposed the withdrawal, and on 30 October, Saeima adopted its draft law and sent it to the president for promulgation.
He vetoed it and sent it back for reconsideration.
On 5 November, Saeima voted to postpone the law’s revision and set 1 November 2026 as the deadline for submitting proposals.
The draft law will therefore be re-examined by the new Saeima, which will be elected in October 2026.
Link to the opinion: https://aeur.eu/f/k2b (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)