Violence against women: time for consolidation of european efforts?

Abstract

According to the survey of 2014 of the European Union’s (EU) Fundamental Rights Agency, 62 million women in the EU are victims of violence. Notably, at the level of Council of Europe, the Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (the Istanbul Convention) recently came into force. It is suggested in this article that the EU should sign and ratify the Istanbul Convention. First, it has the competence to do so, and second, the legislation at the EU level does not provide a comprehensive response to the objective of preventing violence against women and supporting and protecting the particularly vulnerable victims. Instead of developing parallel legal regimes in Europe, it would be the best to consolidate the efforts.