Package for the protection of crime victims

The aim of the Victims Package is to reinforce existing national and EU measures on victims' rights.

Following an initiative by the Spanish Presidency of the Council, the Commission proposed a Directive establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime and a Regulation on mutual recognition of protection measures in civil matters, which complements the Directive on the European protection order, adopted under criminal procedures.

The package introduces the issues of gender-based violence and violence against women in intimate relationships as a crime at EU level and constitutes a first step in EU cooperation on civil law.

The Greens believe that victim protection is an important human rights issue.

The fights for women's rights, support and the protection of victims are closely interlinked, mainly due to the fact that the majority of victims of such crimes are female.

We are calling for the provisions on victim protection to take account of gender aspects as well as other specific, recurrent grounds for discrimination.

Working closely with other political groups, the Greens succeeded in making the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality jointly responsible for all three dossiers. The Commission's proposal was gender blind.

The Greens supported the unprecedented inclusion in EU legislation of gender-based violence and violence in intimate relationships. Our demand that victims of racial or other discrimination also be included gained majority support, and our demand that protection be given to victims of all kinds, including non-EU citizens, was also accepted.

This was a breakthrough, especially for victims of human trafficking.

The Greens, and the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality as a whole, had called for the definition of gender-based violence and violence in intimate relationships to be included as a binding article of the text.

But it ended up only being only included in the non-binding introduction, owing to resistance from Member States.