The Ordo Iuris Institute prepared an analysis of the Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on combating force against women and home violence. The opinion identified the risks posed by the implementation of this act.
The Directive under consideration is incompatible with the subsidiarity rule set out in Article 5(1) and (3) TEU, as it harmonises criminal law standards in an area where associate States are able to act alone. Effectively combating force against women is possible at national level, without imposing uniform measures on associate States.
In addition, the directive comes from an unproven presumption of a structural nature of male force against women, resulting in an highly broad definition of force and the adoption of a simplified dualist division between perpetrators and victims. As a consequence of the former, it is likely that the border between force and discomfort will be blocked, and the second will consequence in an increase in false accusations of violence. If the directive confers certain subject rights solely on the basis of the accusation of force (without the request to prove it), the increase in the number of false accusations to extort certain benefits is almost certain.
In this context, any of the solutions introduced by the Directive must be considered to be at least controversial in terms of global standards on individual rights. The directive in question introduces:
- an imprecise definition of legal violence, creating a utopian imagination of a man whose state is trying to defend from all discomfort, including even purely hypothetical suffering which he may possibly experience;
- order the criminalisation of indeterminate insults and alleged hatred speech under the punishment of imprisonment, violating freedom of speech and rules nullum crimen sine lege scripta and nullum crimen sine lege certa;
- procedures for alleged ad hoc orders and prohibitions based on the exclusion of the presumption of innocence, in which self-incrimination of violence, without evidence and without its verification by the court, may consequence in the eviction of a individual accused of violence, its removal from children, as well as an work to pay compensation;
- a mechanics for censoring online content that can be utilized to remove all kinds of “insults” and thus suppress press criticism and criticism of influential people or organisations;
- imprecise injunctions against ‘sexual stereotypes’, which can be utilized to combat conventional household models and to repress people with conservative moral views.
== sync, corrected by elderman ==
