Intimate partner violence is a recurrent form of violence affecting women in the European Union. Efforts to combat this form of violence require an understanding of its scale and nature, through reliable, systematic and comparable data. Data is necessary to measure the prevalence and consequences of such violence, to monitor state responses to it and to evaluate policies combating it.

The requirement for high quality administrative data is also in line with Member States' international commitments of Member States to fight violence against women, as defined in Directive 2012/29/EU (the Victims' Rights Directive) and the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (the Istanbul Convention).

Data collected by the justice sector is necessary for understanding how efficient and effective the criminal justice system is in dealing with perpetrators of intimate partner violence, and in protecting victims. Incidents reported to the police only provide partial information on the phenomenon, and this data becomes more concrete and reliable as cases progresses through the criminal justice chain. Data from the justice sector is also very important in addressing two main pillars of the Istanbul Convention, protection and prosecution.

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Indicators on intimate partner violence and rape for the police and justice sectors

EIGE's work on data collection on violence against women

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