Gender-based violence is a widespread phenomenon in the European Union, affecting women disproportionally – in 2012, one in three women aged 15 or over experienced physical and/or sexual violence.

Although a price cannot be put on women’s lives and suffering, estimating the lost economic output and public spending on health, legal, social and specialised services with regard to gender-based violence can create a better understanding of the extent and associated costs of this phenomenon.

Attaching a monetary value to the issue can also further support both Member States and the EU in making informed decisions regarding resource allocation across different policy areas. Analysis of the economic costs of gender-based violence may also show the cost of inaction and lack of financial prioritisation.

Acknowledging the importance of preventing and combating gender-based violence in the EU, this study estimates the costs of gender-based violence, using existing methodology from the European Institute for Gender Equality’s (EIGE) 2014 study entitled Estimating the costs of gender-based violence in the European Union. As in the previous study, this report focuses on intimate partner violence as a subset of gender-based violence.

This report focuses on updating estimates of the costs of gender-based and intimate partner violence in the United Kingdom in 2019. These estimates are then extrapolated from the United Kingdom to EU Member States. This updated study on the costs of gender-based violence in the EU is accompanied by a critical review of studies carried out within the EU to estimate the costs of gender-based and intimate partner violence that have been published since EIGE’s 2014 study. This review provides a set of lessons learned for future costing studies at European level and recommendations for estimating the costs of gender-based violence at Member State and EU levels.

This study is accompanied by a technical report, which provides details on the method and data used for the cost estimation for the UK case study, as well as the extrapolation of the results to the EU Member States.

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