European Union

French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday said that "the G20 may be coming to the end of a cycle"

President António Costa attended the G20 summit in Johannesburg. He spoke at Session III: "A fair and just future for all", on 23 November 2025.

"A man kills a woman every 2.5 days in France," read one placard distributed by the feminist collective NousToutes

Written by Ionel Zamfir.

On 25 November each year, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women seeks to raise awareness globally about this serious social issue. On this day, the European Union is due to submit its first evaluation report on compliance with the Istanbul Convention, which it ratified in 2023. For the EU, gender-based violence remains a priority for action. The European Parliament is calling for further measures, such as making gender-based violence an ‘EU crime’.

Violence against women around the world and in the European Union

According to UN Women, one in three women in the world aged 15 and over have suffered sexual or physical violence at least once. Often, this violence was perpetrated by a current or former partner. Digital violence also affects women globally, with the most prevalent forms including misinformation and defamation, deep fakes, and digital threats against women with an active public profile.

Violence against women is defined as violence having a direct link with their gender. It includes physical, psychological and economic forms of violence and takes place both off and online. It is a severe human rights violation and, given its prevalence and role in the subordination of women, is a systemic form of discrimination against women. It has a long-lasting and damaging impact on women and on society as a whole.

The most recent EU-wide survey found that 31 % of women in the EU have suffered violence – including sexual violence and threats of violence – at least once in their lifetime. One in ten said they had been a victim during the last five years (see Figure 1). Although the number of cases of violence reported to the police is on the rise in the EU, the majority of such crimes still go unreported.

Violence against women can also take the form of trafficking. Almost two thirds of trafficking victims in the EU are women, of whom many are trafficked for sexual exploitation. Another extreme form is femicide: the murder of a woman due to her gender. Two thirds of the more than one thousand victims murdered by an intimate partner or family member in 2023, in the 17 EU countries reporting this type of data to Eurostat, were women. To address it, several Member States have adopted specific legal provisions (Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Italy, and Malta).

Figure 1 – Share of women who said they had experienced violence by any perpetrator in the five years before the survey EU action

Fighting gender-based violence is a priority of the EU’s 2020-2025 gender equality strategy. An EU directive adopted in May 2024 on combating violence against women and domestic violence criminalises female genital mutilation and forced marriage, and several forms of cyber-violence. It enhances protection, access to justice and prevention measures for all victims of gender-based violence. Other EU laws also tackle gender-based violence in their areas. For example, the directive on trafficking in human beings, after its 2024 review, makes knowingly using the services of trafficking victims a crime.

The EU took another important step to fight violence against women with the ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention) in 2023. Now, two years later, the EU is conducting its first report as a party to the Convention. On 25 November, the European Commission is due to submit the EU’s ‘baseline evaluation report’ on legislative and other measures that give effect to the Convention’s provisions. The Convention applies to the EU in matters falling within its ‘exclusive external competence’ (as defined in the Treaties) relating to the Union’s institutions and public administration, judicial cooperation in criminal matters, asylum and non-refoulement. It becomes binding on all Member States regarding those matters, including the five which have not yet ratified the Convention. In April 2025, the Commission published a communication outlining the evaluation procedure. Parliament’s LIBE and FEMM committees exchanged views with the Commission on 6 November.

The EU also funds numerous initiatives to combat violence against women through its Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme (2021-2027), particularly its Daphne component. For the budget period after 2027, the Commission proposes to incorporate the fight against gender-based violence in a new Agora programme with a broader focus.

European Parliament position

Parliament has called repeatedly for EU action to combat violence against women. It advocated a comprehensive directive on violence against women and played a pivotal role in the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, by asking the European Court of Justice to clarify the procedure. Parliament has also repeatedly called for a Council decision to make gender-based violence an EU crime in Article 83 TFEU.

In the current term, Parliament has worked on several relevant initiatives. The LIBE and FEMM committees are working jointly on an own-initiative report on the importance of consent-based rape legislation in the EU, which aims to reaffirm the importance of legal reform on the matter in all EU countries in line with the Istanbul Convention requirements. They are expected to adopt the report in the coming weeks.

In a resolution adopted on 13 November 2025, Parliament outlined its vision for a new EU gender equality strategy post-2025. It proposes to make gender-based violence a crime within the EU’s competence, and calls on the Commission to recognise femicide as a ‘distinct and stand-alone crime’; to address the specific needs of victims; and to give special attention, in cooperation with the Member States, to vulnerable victims and those at risk of intersectional discrimination. It also calls on the Commission to propose legislation to tackle gender-based violence at work.

In a resolution adopted in October 2025, Parliament endorsed the roadmap for women’s rights, which declares the fight against gender-based violence to be one of the principles for a gender-equal society.

The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women is marked each year on 25 November. This year, a UN Women initiative – UNiTE campaign – will aim to mobilise various stakeholders around this issue in the run-up to the international Human Rights Day on 10 December.

Read this ‘at a glance’ note on ‘Elimination of violence against women: Two years since the EU ratified the Istanbul Convention‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

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"The G20 may be coming to the end of a cycle," French President Emmanuel Macron warned