by C. Alessandro Mauceri –
The European Parliament said “yes” to the accession of the European Union to the Convention on preventing and combating violence against women, known as the Istanbul Convention, for which the Council will now be able to go ahead with the conclusion of the ratification procedure.
The document which provides for the obligation for member states to introduce protection and support services to combat violence against women, such as an adequate number of shelters, anti-violence centres, 24-hour toll-free telephone lines, psychological counseling and medical assistance for the victims. The Convention calls on the authorities to ensure education in gender equality, sexuality and healthy relationships.
In reality, the European Union had already voted in favor of joining the Istanbul Convention. It had done so en bloc in 2017. But, despite many appeals from the European Parliament, this membership had never been ratified due to the refusal of countries such as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia. Turkey, a non-EU country, withdrew from the Convention (Turkey).
In October 2021, the EU Court of Justice also confirmed the possibility for the EU to ratify the Istanbul Convention even in the absence of a unitary agreement by all member states. In line with this principle, in recent days, the European deputies voted for the ratification of the Istanbul Convention. They did so in two separate votes. The first concerning the institutions and public administration of the Union (approved with 472 votes in favour, 62 against and 73 abstentions) and the second with regard to judicial cooperation in criminal matters, asylum and non-refoulement (with 464 votes in favour, 81 against and 45 abstentions).
The decision of two of the three Italian government parties that chose not to vote in favor of ratifying the Convention came as a surprise. The League and the Brothers of Italy abstained. A surprising decision given that, as a single state, Italy had already signed this document in 2013, even before it officially entered into force, which happened the following year, in 2014. Now, strangely, the majority has decided to follow the road taken by Eastern European countries and did not vote in favour.
There are two official justifications provided to explain this decision, one of merit and one of method. The head of the delegation of the Brothers of Italy to the European Parliament Carlo Fidanza and the MEP of FdI Vincenzo Sofo defined “problematic the fact that in order to speed up the ratification of the Convention by the European Union it was decided to proceed by qualified majority and no longer unanimously”. A technical question judged as “a dangerous precedent for future decisions on new international agreements” given that the logic of unanimous voting has always prevailed in the mechanisms of the European Union.
On the “merit” front, however, the justification was that “with our abstention we wanted to reiterate our concern on gender-related issues”. Indeed, the Istanbul Convention was the first to give a definition of gender that includes the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities and attributes that a given society deems appropriate for women and men. In fact, it is itself that distinguishes between male and female gender.
Apologies that did not prevent Parliament from giving the green light to the Council to ratify the Istanbul Convention.
