On Thursday, the committees on Women’s Rights and Civil Liberties adopted a draft position on revised rules to boost victims’ rights and make reporting a crime safer.
The update of the Victims’ Rights Directive focuses on addressing the shortcomings of the 2012 directive by ensuring victims are informed about their rights. It also proposes a quicker assessment of vulnerable victims (such as children, older people, persons with disabilities, victims of hate crime and victims in detention), seeks to ensure they can access specialist support, and improves support for victims to participate in criminal proceedings through better legal advice. Child victims should have access to specialised and age-appropriate services, including psychological and psychosocial services and legal aid, to support them.
The draft European Parliament position on the revision of the rules was adopted on Thursday by the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality and the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, with 70 votes in favour, 1 against, and 11 abstaining.
MEPs want a number of changes to the Commission proposal to ensure victims are more effectively protected. They want to:
- have free, easily accessible, safe, confidential and user-friendly way to report a crime, including online;
- ensure member states provide free legal aid for victims who do not have sufficient means to pay for legal assistance prior to, during and after criminal proceedings;
- train public authorities that come into contact with victims, such as police officers and court staff, to recognise and deal with victims in a non-discriminatory and professional manner and where relevant, also in a trauma-sensitive, gender-sensitive and child-sensitive manner;
- ensure that regular awareness-raising campaigns are put in place at national level so that victims are aware of their rights under these rules;
- give victims of cross-border crime access to helplines of their choice, including those of other member states;
- protect the dignity of victims from secondary victimisation and glorification of past crimes or convicted offenders.
Quotes
Co-rapporteur for the Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee María Soraya Rodríguez Pamos (Renew, Spain) said:
“Our aim with the revision of the Victims’ Rights Directive was to do more and better to support and protect all victims of crime in the European Union; this report achieves this. We facilitate access to compensation and free legal aid, protect victims of online crime more effectively, including victims of gender-based cyberviolence and child sexual abuse, ask for increased training of officials who might come into contact with victims, and strengthen the measure to avoid victims’ secondary victimisation.”
Co-rapporteur for the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee Javier Zarzalejos (EPP, Spain) added:
“I want to highlight that we have strengthened and included new measures that will make it possible to address the specific needs of the most vulnerable victims, and established a new right to protect victims’ dignity, which aims to prevent secondary and repeated victimisation. In particular, we cannot allow terrorism to be glorified in the EU and have tributes paid to convicted criminals.”
Next steps
The draft position will be tabled for a decision by the full house during the 10-11 April plenary session.
Source – EU Parliament