MEPs in the European Parliament’s LIBE and FEMM committees voted today on their joint report revising the EU’s rules on victims’ rights (the EU Victims’ Rights Directive).

The committees’ vote improves the European Commission’s original proposal in several ways. The European Parliament LIBE and FEMM committees voted to:

• Allow third parties to report abuse to police (instead of undocumented people having to report a crime themselves). This helps address the need for victims to report crimes without direct involvement with law enforcement.
• Ensure people held in (de facto) immigration detention can report abuse from any place of detention or restricted liberty. This expands the more restrictive scope of what the European Commission’s proposal intended with “detention facilities” and brings it in line with the expected rise in (de facto) immigration detention due to the EU Migration Pact.
• Establish mechanisms for reporting potential crimes committed by public officials while on duty. The Commission’s proposal however did not address abuse perpetrated by public authorities such as police, border guards, and staff in immigration detention centres.
• Ensure access to legal aid free of charge for particularly vulnerable victims, including trafficked persons and victims of violence against women.
• Consider residence status in the individual needs assessment, both in the personal characteristics and the dependence to the offender. This will ensure that the specific needs of undocumented victims linked to their residence status are taken into account.
• Ensure victims can not only obtain a decision on compensation, as the Commission proposed, but also to claim compensation. This will strengthen their right to remedies.

At the same time, to our regret, the MEPs failed to introduce comprehensive protections from immigration enforcement.

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