This will be a first directive on violence against women, but it will not be complete.
Discussions have been underway for several months in Brussels around a text which aims, in particular, to bring together the legislation and the criminal response of the 27 member countries on genital mutilation, forced marriage, the disclosure of intimate videos, harassment in line.
But the issue of rape proved the most controversial.
After months of debate, a final European negotiation session is being held this Tuesday on this text.
“This directive will be a step forward, although it will not be the giant step that we, on the side of Parliament and progressive groups, would have liked to see,” said Swedish MEP Evin Incir (Socialists and Democrats group). , one of the negotiators.
The project, as presented on March 8, 2022 by the Commission, provides in Article 5 for a definition of rape based on the absence of consent.
The European Parliament and countries like Belgium, Spain, Greece, Sweden and Italy are on the same line.
But a dozen member states, including France, Germany and Hungary, are opposed to rape being included in the legislation, saying the EU has no competence in the matter.
“On the Wrong Side of History”
French MEP Nathalie Colin-Oesterlé (PPE group, Christian Democrats) regrets that this directive has been reduced to “half a law”.
“I find it terrible,” she explains to AFP.
“Today, with a restrictive definition of rape in certain Member States, including France, there are only a few successful complaints.
The subject is to broaden the field of proof.”
12 NGOs, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, recently found it “unacceptable that certain Member States persist in failing to respond to the need to combat rape throughout the EU, by hiding behind interpretations legal restrictions on the EU's competences.
However, “definitions based on consent have proven that they guarantee better protection and better access to justice” for victims, they assert.
Also read: European definition of rape: five minutes to understand why France is opposed to it
President Emmanuel Macron, who made the fight against violence against women a “great cause” of his five-year term, was questioned about this blockage by elected officials even within his political family.
In Germany, 111 women (feminist activists, artists, journalists, etc.) also recently wrote to the Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann on this subject.
“Macron, Buschmann and (Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor) Orban are preventing us from having legislation on rape based on the absence of consent,” denounced Evin Incir, accusing them of “standing on the wrong side of history ".
The notion of consent not in all laws
The definition of rape differs between EU countries.
In France, for example, the law defines this crime as sexual penetration or oral-genital act committed on a person with violence, coercion, threat or surprise, without the notion of non-consent being explicitly mentioned.
For France and Germany, this crime does not have the cross-border dimension necessary to be considered a “Eurocrime” likely to give rise to European harmonization.
These countries believe that there is a risk that the text will be overturned in the event of an appeal to European justice.
This is contested by the European Parliament and the Commission, who consider that rape can fall within the framework of “sexual exploitation of women”, which is part of “Eurocrimes”.
Proponents of a harmonized definition of rape taking into account the notion of consent also argue that it is consistent with the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women, ratified by the EU.
Faced with the lack of prospect of agreement on the inclusion of rape in the directive, MEPs proposed that the text contain at least an "obligation for Member States to work in favor of a culture based on consent, through school textbooks, specific awareness campaigns,” explains Evin Incir.