In response to EU Council conclusions from 5-6 June 2014 on ‘Preventing and combating all forms of violence against women and girls’, which called on relevant EU Agencies ‘to continue their efforts to combat violence against women and to strengthen their cooperation and pool their expertise’ – FRA will make available the dataset from its EU-wide survey on violence against women for EIGE to use in its work. In this regard FRA and EIGE are drawing on their respective strengths to reinforce the need for enhanced recognition of and responses to violence against women.

By working together and drawing on each Agency’s respective strengths, FRA and EIGE stand side-by-side in addressing the need to fight violence against women with robust data,” said FRA Director Morten Kjaerum.

Gender-based violence against women is a brutal manifestation of power and control of women's lives and remains one of the most pervasive gender inequalities of our time,” said EIGE Director Virginija Langbakk. “In cooperation with FRA EIGE will work further to provide a solid basis for policy making to work towards eliminating this phenomenon that prevents the harms to women, families and societies at large.

In March this year, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) released results from its EU-wide survey on violence against women – which is based on in-depth interviews with 42,000 women across the EU. In parallel, the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) has mapped administrative data sources in the EU28 on violence against women – which identifies significant gaps in official data. By looking at the FRA survey data alongside the information on administrative data from EIGE – it is clear that there is a mismatch between the reality of women’s experiences of violence and what official data tells us.

EIGE is the first organisation to be given access to the FRA’s violence against women dataset. In acknowledgement, EIGE will liaise closely with FRA concerning its use and will fully reference FRA as the source when using the dataset.

In due course, FRA intends to make the dataset more widely available for others to use, and will work closely with the Commission and EIGE in this field.