According to a 2014 study by the Fundamental Rights Agency, 31 % of women in the European Union have experienced physical violence by either a partner or a non-partner since the age of 15, and 7 % of women experienced physical violence by anyone in the 12 months before the survey interview.

Given the size of the phenomenon, gender-based violence has far-reaching, harmful consequences for many families and communities. It not only violates human rights, but also reduces human capital and undermines economic growth.

The report focuses on administrative data collected from 30 different jurisdictions across the EU Member States and the United Kingdom as a primary source for measuring the performance of institutions in preventing and tackling gender-based violence.

Although there are recognised benefits to using administrative data, considerable challenges have also been identified in the use of such data for statistical purposes. For this reason, the quality of the output from administrative sources is increasingly important, particularly in respect of the comparability of these statistics in the EU context.

This report is based on an analysis of the most recent jurisdiction-level data and metadata collected by EIGE in March 2020 and is structured as follows.

To begin with, the indicators and their design are introduced together with a brief overview of EIGE’s data collection process from the 30 different jurisdictions and the data sources. The criteria used to compare data for the purpose of this analysis are described in the light of well-known data comparability challenges at international level.

The current state of play in populating IPV, rape and femicide indicators across the EU is then assessed. This country-level assessment is conducted at the general indicator level, in order to provide an overview of the availability and comparability of data collected by the police and justice sectors, and at the individual component level of VAW, in order to highlight the specific obstacles faced by the jurisdictions in producing indicators in line with international requirements.

A summary of the progress to date, as well as the remaining gaps and challenges in terms of technical, institutional and legislative shortcomings, are then discussed. Examples of promising practices from national data collection systems that are able to provide accurate and comparable data, and highlights those jurisdictions that have adapted their data collection systems to respond to data needs are also given.

A set of annexes complements the report, and includes detailed information on the situation and data reported by each jurisdiction.

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