How do international treaties and EU directives bind European institutions in combating gender-based violence? De Vido and Frulli (2023) examine how the EU’s accession to the Istanbul Convention and the 2024 VAW Directive establish binding obligations across member states and EU administration.
Violence against women and domestic violence constitute severe violations of human rights and persistent manifestations of structural discrimination that undermine foundational EU values of equality and non-discrimination. The EU reinforced its substantive legal and criminal procedural framework by completing accession to the Istanbul Convention in June 2023, which entered into force for the Union on October 1, 2023. While all EU member states have signed the Convention and 22 have ratified it, the Union’s formal accession covers matters within its competence: judicial cooperation in criminal matters, asylum and non-refoulement, and the operation of the Union’s institutions and public administration under Article 336 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).
To operationalize the main sections of the Istanbul Convention within judicial cooperation, the EU adopted the Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence (VAW Directive) on May 7, 2024, complementing existing policy, funding, and the EU asylum acquis. Crucially, based on Opinion 1/19 of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the Convention’s preventive and protective obligations directly bind EU institutions regarding statutory staff, non-statutory personnel, and visitors to EU premises. The Court affirmed that the Union cannot restrict itself to minimum standards or supporting measures; instead, it must ensure these human rights obligations are fully satisfied, guaranteeing an internal level of protection that matches the requirements imposed on member states.
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De Vido, S., & Frulli, M. (Eds.). (2023). Group of experts on action against violence against women and domestic violence. In Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (pp. 728–729). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839107757.ch72