Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1512911
10 NEWS EWROPEJ maltatoday | SUNDAY • 10 DECEMBER 2023 MATTHEW VELLA mvella@mediatoday.com.mt Vacancy (Events & Logistics) For more info visit micas.art/get-involved or contact people@micas.art micas.art Closing at noon Tuesday 27 th December 2023 Manager AT home, Malta's Labour ad- ministration has launched a national strategy on domes- tic violence which, ministers hope, will address the stutter- ing enforcement of the laws protecting women from ag- gressors. But in Brussels, the mood is a different one. While Malta's Commissioner for equality Helena Dalli seeks to advance a harmonised definition of no-consent rape in the EU's di- rective on gender violence, her home country does not want to take that step. Together with 16 EU mem- ber states, Malta is adopting a restrictive view of the kind of crimes that the European Union should be able to ap- ply common rules on. And a cross-border application of rules on the prosecution of rape, is not one of them. Activists and politicians who believe in the objectives of the Gender Violence Directive have been met by a lack of ap- petite in the EU to legislate on new areas of so-called "euro crimes", where a standardised definition would – theoreti- cally – protect a female victim of gender violence in Bulgaria as much as she is protected in Malta. Justice minister Jonathan At- tard says Maltese national law already ratifies in full the prin- ciples of the Istanbul Conven- tion with the introduction in 2018 of no-consent rape. "Our national law goes be- yond the minimum standards proposed by the Commission regarding rape," he says. But Attard will not be an evangeliser in Brussels. Prising open the EU Treaty, which al- ready has its list of serious "eu- ro crimes" with a cross-border dimension, can be a tricky po- litical line to follow – perhaps more particularly for a small member state. "Nationally our law is already in line with the proposed Di- rective. We do not think how- ever that the EU should have this competence on aspects of national law by casting a wid- er obligation on other mem- ber states," Attard concedes – predicting that Malta would not want to have its own hand forced by the Union, on other aspects of criminal law. It is a restrictive view of EU law which, even insiders con- cede, does not truly reflect Malta's alleged ambition as a champion of LGBTQI rights in Europe. "Malta may have enshrined the Istanbul Convention on paper, but the truth is that women are unprotected when a failing law enforcement sys- tem cannot take them out of the house of their aggressor," says one activist, who will re- main anonymous. Last year 3,100 victims of domestic vi- olence – 77% of them women – sought assistance from the law, which struggles to take immediate action to protect particularly vulnerable women with no choice but to live in- side their aggressor's home. "Now even at an EU level... without the super-structure to apply uniformity on legal protection, effectively it leaves women, and LGBTQI people, vulnerable to less safe legal systems," says the activist. "A Maltese woman might have the protection of the Is- tanbul Convention's princi- ples at home, but what hap- pens if she is raped in another member state... should we not demand that say, Bulgaria, affords her the same guaran- tees? Will we be shocked that another EU member state does not have the level of protection guaranteed by Malta? Or will we just stigmatise some female tourist for picking a 'less safe' EU country for a holiday?" Two Maltas Clearly, two different Maltas are at play at home and abroad in Brussels. Malta often prefers to adopt a restrictive view of EU lawmak- On no-consent rape, Malta shies away Malta has ratified the Istanbul Convention's principles in its national law, but will not evangelise for Helena Dalli's proposal to standardise no-consent rape across all the EU