Members of the European Parliament in a resolution on Wednesday called on the European Union to ratify the Istanbul Convention and urged the remaining six countries - Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia - to also do so without delay.

All EU member states signed the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention, in 2017 but the six countries have not yet ratified it.

“Today, we once again called for the EU ratification of the Convention but we also sent a request to the remaining six countries that have not yet ratified the document. We ask the Council to withstand pressure from the mentioned minority and bring the process of ratifying this extremely important document to an end, without delay,” Croatian MEP Predrag Matic (SDP) told Hina.

Implementation of the Istanbul Convention

Croatia ratified the first legally binding document on the protection of women from violence in 2018, but Matic says that the biggest challenge in its implementation is the “lack of political will of those in power.”

He listed difficulties in prosecuting such crimes and mild punishments for the perpetrators as problems. “The fact that the victims are repeatedly exposed to violence is frightening – first by the perpetrators, and then often by the system,” Matic said.

Turkey was the first to ratify the Convention, but also the first to withdraw from it in 2021. The resolution underscores that this is a “dangerous precedent for other countries.”

Poland is now looking to withdraw from the Convention.

MEPs stressed that Ukraine can serve as an example to the six EU member states that refuse to ratify the document. Kyiv ratified it last year, which should “serve as support for Ukrainian authorities to prosecute crimes against women and children committed by Russian soldiers and fight gender-based violence,” the resolution states.

Six years after the EU signed the Convention, it has still not ratified it because of the refusal of a few member states. However, the EU Court of Justice’s opinion of 6 October 2021 stated that the European Union can ratify the Istanbul Convention without having the agreement of all member states.

The EU’s accession to the Istanbul Convention does not exempt member states from ratifying it, say MEPs, who urge the remaining six countries – Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia – to ratify the Convention without delay.