The 27 Member States under study harbor a huge variation in protection order laws and approaches. This is seen as an obstacle to consistent protection in the European Union: There is reason to believe that these discrepancies could impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of the protection provided.
Based on the national reports and the victim interviews, we furthermore conclude that there is not a single EU Member State that provides victims with optimal protection. In each legal system under study, there were gaps in the protection of victims and points for improvement. However, we also identified ‘promising’ practices – practices that go beyond the minimum protection that all Member States should provide victims at the very least.
As far as the implementation of the European Protection Order Directive and the Regulation on the mutual recognition of protection measures in civil matters are concerned, several (possible) problems were identified. Based on a close reading of the two mutual recognition instruments and of the information contained in the national reports, we distinguished two types of potential problems or challenges:
- Challenges related to the interpretation of the two instruments
- Challenges related to the national differences in protection order legislation and practice
The final report can be found through this link.
Rectification: Contrary to the information in the final report, the author of the Slovenian report was Nina Persak