The European Union will soon have its first law on violence against women in its history. The European Parliament approved the regulations this week and it will soon be ratified by the states, which will have three years to transpose it into their criminal codes. This is a law that harmonizes several crimes in the Twenty-seven, so that forced marriage, the dissemination of personal images without consent or female genital mutilation are equally prosecuted. However, rape will not be included. Despite being a crime in all EU countries, it is regulated differently. And, for now, this will continue, due to the rejection of France or Germany, among others.
Brussels proposed that lack of consent should be included as a violation in the legal order of states, with penalties of a minimum of eight years, precisely because this is not the case in the criminal codes of several countries. In up to 11 EU states the use of force must be proven and victims have to prove that they explicitly refused.
During the negotiations, the inclusion of lack of consent was one of the main debates. The European Parliament, generally much more ambitious in laws that address fundamental rights, considered that consent should be at the center, and that the law could not not include it.
The debates within the Council began with significant rejection from the same countries where, precisely, the use of force must be demonstrated. “We already expected it from Hungary and Poland, but from France and Germany, it was a disappointment,” sources in the negotiation lament. In June last year, Sweden—which held the interim presidency—admitted that there were “intensely debated legal reasons at a technical level” and a quorum had not been achieved to include lack of consent. The Council was divided for and against, but the weight of Paris and Berlin gained.
For her part, the European Commissioner for Equality, Helena Dalli, could not hide her discomfort at the “lack of political ambition” of the countries and directly begged the European Parliament to fight in the negotiations with the states to include consent. The talks began under the Spanish presidency.
The negotiations were on the verge of derailing more than once. The opposing countries insisted above all that the issue was purely legal and that they did not question the crime. France and Germany maintained their position because the Council's legal services interpreted that rape could not be a Eurocrime. In particular, they alleged – in a text to which La Vanguardia had access – that European treaties include sexual exploitation as a crime, but according to their interpretation, this refers to human trafficking and cannot be extended to aggression. sexual activity without consent, as the Commission defended. Although it left the door open to countries to expand the definition, it also warned of legal risks in the event of litigation and the precedent it could entail. On the contrary, the legal opinions of Parliament and the Commission argued that the adjustment was possible.
The Franco-German position was immovable and Parliament gave in so that the law could be passed, although it struggled for the Commission to publish an analysis in five years to determine whether some aspects should be changed, which could open the door to including consent. in the future. This is defended by MEPs Diana Riba (ERC) and Soraya Rodriguez (Ciudadanos), both Parliament negotiators. “At no time was the Council in an ambitious position regarding this law,” laments Rodriguez.
