How does Europe protect women from male violence? What are the challenges, obstacles and objectives of new European legislation to eradicate this social scourge?
These are some of the issues that were addressed, on Friday 31 March, at the session "For a Europe free of machismo: what will the future European law look like?" of the series of online debates Café Europa, organized by Fundació Catalunya Europa and Asociación Horizonte Europa, on the last Friday of each month.
EU Member States currently have legislation on gender-based violence, and there are also European Parliament resolutions, but there is still no common legal framework across the European Union on violence against women and including all forms of violence.
For this reason, the European Parliament and the European Commission are working on a new European directive, called for years ago by civil society and some groups in the European Parliament, in the field of the fight against sexist violence to establish definitions, common rules and penalties at European level. In this sense, Spain is one of the pioneering countries in the laws for the protection of women, but the situation is very unequal in all EU member states.
The following speakers participated in this session:
- Diana Riba, MEP from the Greens-EFA Group and rapporteur on the report on the European directive against sexist violence.
- Lucía Avilés, magistrate specializing in male violence and Meninas prize 2022 of the Government Delegation in Catalonia, for its specialization in gender perspective and the judicial legislative initiative to make economic violence also a form of male violence.
The debate was moderated by the director of the Catalunya Europa Foundation, Dolors Camats, and the president of the Horizonte Europa Association, Albert Royo.
