Across Europe, a wide range of service providers are working to strengthen protection for women facing violence. But the latest EU Gender-Based Violence Survey shows how far we must go: only 21% of women who experienced violence contacted healthcare or social services, just 14% reported it to the police, and only 6% reached out to a helpline.
Many stay silent because of fear, shame or a belief that nothing will change. These findings make one thing clear: protection must begin long before violence escalates.
At a recent meeting, EU equality ministers reaffirmed that tackling violence against women requires more than reacting after a call to emergency services.
They called for stronger emphasis on early detection and intervention, urging communities and institutions to recognise risk and interrupt violence before it escalates.
“Each of us has a role to play in breaking the silence and stopping violence against women,” said Magnus Heunicke, Danish Minister for Equality and the Environment.
“The sooner the intervention, the less the trauma will be”
This shift in emphasis is urgently needed according to Mafalda Ferreira, President of Associação Plano i, a Portuguese NGO supporting victims of gender-based violence.
“Awareness is essential but it is not sufficient. Real prevention involves a combination of structural changes...it requires sustained funding, time, proper measures and political will,” she says.
Mafalda adds that violence can remain hidden because those most at risk have least access to support. And she outlines the three protection gaps that could hold Europe back.
-
The visibility gap
Minority groups, young people and those with disabilities often face additional barriers to reporting. Meaning the cycle of violence continues unchecked. “LGBTI+ victims are often in situations where essential services are not prepared to face them,” says Mafalda.
-
The system gap
Schools, hospitals, law enforcement and other agencies often miss early signs because they lack training. “Frontline workers are not sufficiently prepared to detect and respond,” she notes.
-
The structural gap
Even where national strategies exist, protection efforts can be fragmented. Short-term projects, limited budgets and one-off awareness campaigns cannot shift culture.
“This is not cheap and quick,” Malfada stresses.
What protection looks like in real life
Despite the challenges, programmes like those run by Plano i show what gender-sensitive, victim-friendly protection looks like when it works in practice.
Their approach combines early intervention with services designed around the specific needs, identities and risks faced by survivors. This work includes:
- Safe, targeted housing: Projects such as Casa Arco-Íris, the LGBTI+ emergency shelter, provide safe accommodation to help survivors rebuild in a safe space.
- Education and bystander training: Its UNi+ programme works in higher education to train staff, support victims and equip peers to intervene safely.
- Support for children and youth: Services such as Espaço Lara provide help to children who have witnessed or experienced domestic violence.
- Specialised support for LGBTI+ survivors: Centro Gis offers psychological, social, legal and medical support tailored to the specific needs of LGBTI+ victims of domestic or gender-based violence.
These initiatives show how early, coordinated, gender-sensitive and victim-centred action can keep survivors safe and build trust in support systems.
Plano i’s experience is a reminder that when services are designed with victims’ real needs in mind, they can offer a pathway to more effective protection across Europe.
Doing so relies on early action alongside systems built to spot risk, intervene appropriately and support victims long before violence becomes fatal.
How one Swedish police task force rewrote the rulebook on support services
In Sollentuna, north of Stockholm, a small team of officers has shown that a police response to domestic and intimate-partner violence doesn’t have to be reactive.
“Police work is often reactive: someone calls in an alarm, the police investigate and try to get the perpetrator to court. That’s the process,” says Inspector Martin Marmgren.
“But when it comes to gang-related violence and organised crime, authorities realised they could not simply wait for the next shooting. You must act proactively.”
Violence against women, he argues, demands exactly the same mindset.
“Domestic violence is up there with gun-related violence. In some parts of Sweden, more women are killed by partners than people are killed by gun crime.,” he says.
“And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Domestic violence and controlling behaviour are enormous problems for the whole of society.”
Marmgren and his team were tasked with building a system that does not wait for a new report or a crisis point.
“For me, it was obvious we had to have intelligence. We cannot work blindly,” explains the Inspector.
“We must have this overview to prevent lethal violence or protect somebody that’s continuously victimised in domestic violence.”
Their strategy rests on three pillars:
- A constantly updated picture of the most dangerous perpetrators and the women most at risk
- Operational outreach, where officers proactively contact victims and perpetrators
- A protection mindset across the whole local police area, not just a specialist unit
“It’s common to have strategic policy documents stating that something is important. But that is seldom enough to lead to actual change in operational police work or culture” says Marmgren.
“You don’t expect things to happen without specialist groups who have time to work with this problem in a dedicated way.”
In Sollentuna the specialist team is composed of officers who get to use a part of their time working exclusively with the assignment of preventing domestic violence and the rest in their regular work as patrolling or community policing. That leads to outreach among all frontline personnel.
Reaching victims before the violence escalates
Officers visit women who have previously been subjected to violence—even if they have made no new report.
In one case, repeated contact eventually persuaded a woman to accept help and move to safety.
“It would not have happened without our outreach work,” says Marmgren.
The Swedish approach recognises that many women do not report abuse immediately, either through fear, loyalty to the perpetrator or the “normalisation” of abuse.
Proactive policework, alongside cooperation with shelters and social services, can give victims the confidence to come forward.
It can also improve risk-assessments and give invaluable support in potentially dangerous situations, for example by having police present when a woman needs to access belongings in a home that she has fled.
“At the beginning of this year, we had the resources in place, we started working and we saw we were able to do things,” he says.
“Our uniformed colleagues on patrol saw that when they reported something, we were taking that information and doing something about it.
“That motivated them to put in the extra work for more information, to encourage women to cooperate and talk about the violence. We saw a change in culture.”
Putting responsibility on perpetrators
The task force also focuses on the men using violence. When a restraining order is breached, the team acts quickly.
Officers make unannounced visits to high-risk perpetrators, combining swift enforcement with offers of treatment and behavioural change programmes.
“We are clear about boundaries, but also that there is a way out. Our task is not only to prosecute, but also to prevent the next crime,” Marmgren notes.
Most of their information comes from within the police, but the team also cooperates with women’s shelters and social services.
What began as a pilot has now influenced the culture of all frontline officers. Domestic violence cases are discussed differently and risk factors are recognised earlier.
“While domestic violence didn’t get as much focus before as gang-related violence, it gets more attention now our colleagues saw that we were doing this for real,” says Marmgren.
“They saw we were following through and trying to make a difference. We go there, meet the people and make a difference. It’s not rocket science, but it makes a big difference.”
The Sollentuna model shows that when police and support services act early, work proactively and prioritise victims’ safety, the results can reshape entire systems.
It offers a practical blueprint for other authorities across Europe that want to make it easier for women to report violence and seek help.
Member States need to embed early-intervention, gender-sensitive and victim-friendly practice everywhere from the justice system to healthcare, social services and education.
When authorities invest in these systems, trust begins to return. And with trust comes the possibility of more women coming forward, more violence being prevented and a future where women’s safety is the rule, not the exception.
