Non-consensual sex must become a crime across the EU

The EPP Group wants to include non-consensual sex in the new EU Directive on Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence.

Today, Parliament's Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, and Legal and Home Affairs Committees will vote on the first ever EU law criminalising violence against women. However, EU Member States plan to remove the offence of non-consensual sex, i.e. rape, from the new law.

"Women across Europe will have no understanding or agreement with the removal of non-consensual sex as an offence in the Directive. Rape does not have to be a violent act - if a woman does not consent, it is rape. EU Member States need to face up to the reality that it is every woman's right to be as protected in one Member State as she is in another”, said Frances Fitzgerald MEP, Parliament's negotiator on the Directive. "We want to correct this disgraceful anomaly. With violence against women continuing to increase as a phenomenon, the time for action is long overdue."

Nathalie Colin-Oesterlé MEP, the EPP Group negotiator of the law in the Legal and Home Affairs Committee, added: "The EU is sending out a strong signal to the millions of women who are victims of violence. To combat this scourge, we need to prevent, support, protect and punish."