FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Back in 2020, the European Commission adopted its gender equality strategy for the next five years. Its aim? To achieve “a Europe where gender-based violence, sex discrimination and structural inequality between women and men are a thing of the past”. We're now in 2026, and it's fair to say there is still a lot of work to do. In a recent EU-wide survey, one in three women reported having experienced physical or sexual violence at some point in her life. Sit with that for a moment. One in three. Much of this violence remains underreported and underprosecuted, and too little is being done to prevent it. So what exactly is the European Union doing to combat violence against women? 
To answer that question, I'm joined by Lisa Collste. She works in the European Commission's DG Justice, where she focuses on gender-based violence, an issue she has worked on for many years at EU level, at the United Nations, and as a public prosecutor in Sweden. In our conversation, we discuss how widespread violence against women is and how it shows up in everyday life, both offline and online. We look at the EU's accession to the Istanbul Convention and the new Directive on Combating Violence Against Women, what they change and what they require states to do. We also touch on how these legal tools have been misrepresented and weaponized in debates around gender and sexuality. And we step back to reflect on the deeper causes of gender-based violence and the societal shifts it would take to reduce it. 
And just before we begin, if you or someone close to you is affected by violence against women or domestic violence and need support, help is available. In some EU countries you can call 116 016 for free and confidential support. If that number isn't available where you live, please check the list of national helplines in the show notes.
Lisa, welcome to the show! Earlier in your career you worked as a public prosecutor in Sweden and you handled domestic violence cases. Can you explain what led you to that work and what it was like?

LISA COLLSTE: I actually decided to be a prosecutor because I wanted to combat violence against women and domestic violence. And from my very first days as a prosecutor, I was really surprised [by] the high prevalence of these crimes. Basically, every night shift, I would have [the] police calling after arresting a man after a call from a woman who was fearing for her life. And this was just one part of Stockholm. One of my very first cases of domestic violence concerned a young couple. I think they were around 19. And I was so surprised how a young couple's love could lead to something so destructive, after she had just said these three very dangerous words, “I leave you”. And he had made these oral threats to her. He was convicted for this. And then a couple of months later, I received the news that he had shot her. And this really showed, you know, coming so close to these cases, as you do as a prosecutor, is very strong. 

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Did she make it? 

LISA COLLSTE: Luckily, she survived and he was convicted of attempted murder and he got a long prison sentence.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: What do you think should have happened in that case?

LISA COLLSTE: I think it was important in this case that we had a good investigation of the initial oral threats where he had said that he would kill her, because this helped as evidence proving that he was the perpetrator when he actually was there trying to kill her. So I think it's important to really investigate these crimes and to document them because that might be important moving forward.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: It also shows that these kind of verbal threats have to be taken extremely seriously. 

LISA COLLSTE: Yeah, yeah, that is very serious. Maybe someone would think, and the way it's valued in the criminal code, it doesn't have a very strong sentence, generally. But imagine yourself, I mean, receiving oral threats that someone would kill you. It's terrifying.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: What is it about domestic violence cases that makes them different from other criminal investigations?

LISA COLLSTE: Well, these cases are different because they happen often within the walls of a house, and there are no witnesses there normally, in the way that there might be when it comes to other crimes. And then we also know that these victims are dependent and, you know, normally very close to the perpetrators, and they share life together, which makes it a lot more complex to handle these cases.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Could you expand on that? What exactly does it mean in practice for those handling the investigative work?

LISA COLLSTE: So if you manage to have trained police, who arrive to the crime scene, who know what to do, who know that they need to film the first interview with the victim, who can document the apartment or house by taking pictures… Maybe there is a chair that has been thrown on her. And maybe that chair is actually lying on the floor, which strengthen her story. And if they know that they need to document her bruises et cetera immediately, so that they take her to the hospital, and they know that she needs a lawyer, and the lawyer will help her to maybe identify situations where she has been a victim of this before. And then the police need to ask her, have you maybe written a diary on this? Have you taken pictures [of your injuries] before? Have you spoken with any friends? Then they need to listen to these friends to hear them. Maybe knock on the doors of the neighbors. Are there any colleagues that have seen something before? Because we know that… I heard somewhere that the time the woman calls is normally the 34th time it happens in general… So we know there are many situations before, and it's important to get that. So by just applying quite small changes, that would lead to big differences on the ground, from having to drop a case or to a judgment based on the same circumstances. And then the perpetrator in cases of domestic violence needs to be arrested and needs to go into pretrial detention. Because we cannot ask the victim to continue her story and then go to bed next to the perpetrator the same night. And then we also know that we need coordination because this affects the victim's whole life. Maybe she needs to go to a shelter to be safe and then she cannot work. How do we handle that? How will she ensure that her children can still stay with her and still have the right to education? So I think this really shows that we need a whole of society approach to these crimes because it affects the victim's whole life.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: You mentioned the importance of gathering evidence early. Is that also because, over time, it can become harder for victims to testify?

LISA COLLSTE: Yes, many victims of domestic violence or intimate partner violence, they tend to not hang on to their stories because they may be threatened by their perpetrator. If you have a recorded interview with that victim, you can show that video in the courtroom and that will be very strong. I've done that in my own cases. And when you see the victim sitting there, you know, crying, explaining what happened in the room where it happened and you see the blood and you see how she explains, and how that is also supported by the mess in the apartment. That would be strong, much stronger than sitting and reading from an interview which has just been written down. 

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: When you lay it out like that, it makes a lot of sense and you’d think that this is standard practice everywhere, yet it often isn't. What's holding things back?

LISA COLLSTE: Law enforcement, prosecutors, judges are simply not trained to do this efficiently. And this is an area which has not been prioritized for a long time. And it also requires a new way of thinking. We know that still in Europe, victims go to the police and they are not taken seriously because the police say: no, go home, this is part of family life, this is not a real crime. So there needs to be a shift in seeing that this is actually real crime. This is [among] the most severe crimes.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Could it be that law enforcement, like many other policy areas, has long been shaped mainly by men and that the experiences of women haven't always been fully reflected in law enforcement priorities and practices? Or am I now reading too much in what you've just said? 

LISA COLLSTE: No, I think that's very true. I think also the way we handle these crimes and the way we value them is based on the inequalities in societies and who is actually writing our laws. 

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: So far we've talked mainly about domestic violence. How does domestic violence fit into to the broader picture of gender-based violence.

LISA COLLSTE: Well domestic violence is defined as violence within the domestic unit or the household or violence between partners or previous partners. And this kind of violence domestic violence is often gender-based violence. That means that it's violence directed against a woman or a girl because she's a woman or a girl or violence that affects women and girls disproportionately. 

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Could you give examples? 

LISA COLLSTE: Yeah, violence against women that is directed against a woman or a girl because she's a woman or a girl, we can say, for instance, female genital mutilation. But then there can also be this violence that affects women and girls disproportionately. And here we could say rape, because we know when we see the numbers that, I think, one out of six women has been a victim of sexual violence, and we know that women are more likely to be raped. But men can also be raped.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: And how about cyberbullying? For instance, female politicians often face a particularly vicious kind of online abuse, much more than their male counterparts. Would that be an example as well?

LISA COLLSTE: Yes, we know that female politicians are more likely to be targeted [by] cyber violence and also targeted in a different way than male politicians. And this is, of course, when we see female politicians leaving their jobs because of threats that they receive online or when they start to do their work differently in order to avoid receiving these threats, that's a real risk for democracy.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: I've brought up politicians as an example because it's very visible there but I imagine this kind of online violence affects many other women too.

LISA COLLSTE: Journalists, human rights defenders, we see the same. And we also, I mean, girls online, I have daughters myself, and I can see that their life is happening online. But as girls, they are not safe online.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Some listeners might still wonder why does the gender of the victim matter? Why isn't gender-based violence against women simply treated as violence, full stop?

LISA COLLSTE: I think it's very important to treat it as gender-based violence because, as I mentioned earlier, this violence requires another response from society. It's very difficult for a woman to leave a violent relationship. And we know this normalization process has often placed her in a situation where she is very lonely and very controlled, you know, very isolated from society because that's where he has put her. And here we cannot simply wait until something more severe happens. I think it's very important in these cases that law enforcement can work proactively and reach out to these women to show really that there is a way out of this. We will help you. There need to be resources that can actually live up to that, and then help her leave before it is too late. And there needs to be support on how to find a new job, maybe find new housing. It can be minor things as knowing what to do with a dog or the pet, because we know also that pets are often used to control women. So we need to rethink these situations and help the woman by making it easier. And then I think we cannot ask these persons to run around, to go to the police for an interview here, to go to the hospital there, to go to the social services there. I think it would be helpful to have places so they only need to go to one place, for example.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: I didn't know that about pets, but in some ways it doesn't surprise me. But to your bigger point, I guess that if we don't see the gender dimension here, the roles and expectations that societies place on women, and how those play into both the violence itself and the ability to escape from it, then we're missing something crucial about social reality. And if we miss that, we're not really addressing the problem.
So what tends to drive this kind of violence?

LISA COLLSTE: I would say that this violence is a manifestation of discrimination and inequalities. And this is often a way for men to exercise domination and control of their partners. They want to be able to control every single move that she's doing and every single step she's taking. I mean, this coercive control is often the key reason for violence, where the person tries to control another person. And there are all the time threats, you know, where are you going now? Who are you meeting? When are you coming back? And now this has become very easy to do [with] internet. You can easily stalk a person and also threaten her by just saying, if you don't do what I say, I will post this picture or this video online. Sometimes he only needs to look at her without saying anything. And she knows: if I don't do this, he will punish me with violence, including cyber violence. And that's why the most dangerous words a woman can say are: “I leave you”. Because that's the moment when the perpetrator feels that he's losing control.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: I'd like to zoom out for a moment to look at the data. Collecting statistics on gender-based violence is notoriously difficult because much of it goes unreported. Still, there has been an EU-wide effort to obtain a clearer picture. Could you tell us about the EU Gender-Based Violence Survey? How was it carried out and what did it set out to capture? 

LISA COLLSTE: This EU-wide survey is an initiative by Eurostat, EIGE and FRA…

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: The European Institute for Gender Equality and the Fundamental Rights Agency.

LISA COLLSTE: Exactly. And this survey actually showed that violence against women is very rarely reported. Only one out of eight of the women that they interviewed had reported this to the police. So then we cannot only count on reports to the police if we want to get a clear picture of what is actually happening. And that's why it's important to have surveys. And this was the purpose of this EU-wide survey.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: And what were the main findings? What stood out most?

LISA COLLSTE: One out of three women said that they had been a victim of physical violence, oral threats or sexual violence. That's one out of three women and girls. For me, it was also very striking that almost one out of five women said that they had been a victim of intimate partner violence or violence by a family member. One out of five. That is a high number of women who are not safe in their homes. And then there's also data in this survey showing that one out of three women have been a victim of sexual harassment at work. A number that rises to 41.6% when it comes to young women. And it strikes me a lot, you know, young women going out to get their first jobs and then they meet violence in their very workplace.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: The survey was carried out between 2020 and 2024 across the EU. A great deal of care went into its methodology, and yet the report is clear that the real numbers are likely higher than what the interviewers found. What we see is already shocking. As you said, one in three women has experienced physical or sexual violence. Only one in eight reports this to the police. Workplace sexual harassment is extremely common. So is stalking. I mean, whatever one makes of the exact figures, the overall picture is clearly one of very high prevalence. I'll put a link in the show notes so listeners can see for themselves. But just one more question on the findings. Do these patterns affect all women in the same way or do some groups face particular risks?

LISA COLLSTE: Well, we know that certain groups are more likely to be victims of violence against women and domestic violence. And these are victims of intersectional discrimination. Basically, the fact that they are women, but they also face another discrimination ground. It could be that they are disabled women or migrant women, for example. They are at an increased risk of gender-based violence. 

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: And why is that important to recognize?

LISA COLLSTE: Because when we know that they are at an increased risk of violence that means that the society has a responsibility to do even more in these cases. How can we ensure that these women are safe? How can we ensure that the asylum process is safe and that the centers are safe? And how can we ensure that disabled women are safe? LGBTIQ women, how can we ensure that they are safe, et cetera? I think this is why data collection is so important, because it teaches us where this happens. And it's also important because once we have data, we can also evaluate the policies that we already have in place. Are they effective? Are they being implemented? Or do we need to change them in one way or another?

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: We've talked a lot about the social reality and the data. I'd like to shift for a moment to the legal side of the story, to what states are required to do. One case that is often mentioned as a turning point is the European Court of Human Rights judgment of 2009 in Opuz v. Turkey. Could you remind us what happened in that case? 

LISA COLLSTE: That case was very important. Opuz was a victim of domestic violence and very serious violence, I would say. And her mother was ultimately killed by Opuz's husband when she wanted to leave him. 

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: And this didn't come out of the blue, right? It followed years of repeated and escalating violence, complaint after complaint to the police, medical reports, no effective intervention. So it kept happening again and again and again…

LISA COLLSTE: …again and again. So it had happened for many years. And in the court case, you can really see that the Turkish State did not act. And therefore, the court held that by not protecting [her] and letting this violence happen, the State was breaching Article 2 and Article 3 and Article 14 [of the ECHR].

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Just to spell that out, Article 2 is the right to life, Article 3 is the prohibition of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, and the court said that the State had failed to act with due diligence to protect these rights. And it also found a violation of Article 14, which is the ban on discrimination, because this violence overwhelmingly affects women, and the State's inaction therefore mainly affected women. 

LISA COLLSTE: Exactly.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: I've brought up Opuz because it helped spur work on what became the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention, adopted in 2011. What was the Istanbul Convention designed to do?

LISA COLLSTE: The Istanbul Convention was a landmark step. It's the guiding framework on how to handle violence against women and domestic violence. It recognizes that violence against women is a manifestation of historical unequal power relations between women and men, which have led to the domination over and discrimination against women by men and the prevention of the full advancement of women. And the convention was the first ever legally binding convention that put in place a legal framework to stop this.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: The convention is often summed up as prevention, protection, prosecution and policy coordination, the four Ps. Could you walk us through those? What does the Convention actually require states to do?

LISA COLLSTE: Well, the Convention also codifies this due diligence principle in its Article 5. But then it also really highlights that states need to prevent this violence from happening in the first place. Because when we know that this violence is a manifestation of gender inequalities, we understand that we need to tackle gender inequalities. And that we do through awareness raising campaigns, education in schools. Training of law enforcement, healthcare professionals, teachers, judges, you name it. So prevention is key. And then we need to protect women when it happens. The convention states that there need to be protection orders in place. There needs to be a sufficient number of shelters. There need to be helplines in place, which we know are key, because this is often the first thing a woman does is to call a helpline. And here they get guidance on how to proceed. Then we need to end the impunity that exists when it comes to these crimes. So these crimes need to be prosecuted and there needs to be an investigation that understands the dynamics of these crimes. And then there also need to be policies in place that ensure that there is multi-agency cooperation. We have this Barnahus model, for instance, when it comes to children, so there is a place where social workers, police, prosecutorial authorities, health care professionals work together. So a child who has been a victim doesn't have to go around to different places, [but only needs] to go to one place. And I think this is how we need to think for intimate partner violence as well.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: What forms of gender-based violence does the Istanbul Convention require states to criminalize under national law?

LISA COLLSTE: It covers forced marriage, female genital mutilation, rape based on a lack of consent. It covers psychological violence, stalking, physical violence and also forced abortion and forced sterilization and sexual harassment.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Most Council of Europe states have ratified the Istanbul Convention. But the picture is not entirely straightforward. Turkey, the first signatory, later withdrew and several EU member states never ratified the Convention at all. In Latvia, parliament even voted to withdraw just a year after ratification. What's going on here? How do you explain this?

LISA COLLSTE: The Convention is controversial for some. It has often been said that it goes against family life, although we know that what really hurts family life is, of course, violence.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Can we drill down on that a little? Because in several countries the Convention is criticized, often by nationalist or socially conservative movements, as undermining family values, and that critique is frequently linked to its use of the term “gender”. How do you see that criticism?

LISA COLLSTE: This is a big misunderstanding of the real purpose of the Convention, and I think it's based on fear shown by these anti-gender movements. And the Convention is used to weaponize and undermine feminisms, LGBTQ rights and democratic values. And what's mainly misunderstood is this definition of gender in Article 3 of the Convention, which says that gender should mean the roles, behaviors, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men. I think many have not read this definition, so they misunderstand the definition of gender and they misunderstand the purpose of the Convention.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Let me try to reflect back to you what you just said, because this is exactly where people often talk past each other. When the Istanbul Convention talks about gender, it's not defining who women or men are, and it’s not regulating questions of sexual orientation or identity. It’s using gender as a lens to understand power and social expectationsAnd the core point is: if law enforcement, courts, support services, if they ignore these dynamics, they will systematically fail victims, even if the law looks neutral on paper. That’s what the Convention is trying to change. 

LISA COLLSTE: Yes, exactly.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: The EU itself also became a party to the Istanbul Convention relatively recently, in 2023. What does it mean for the EU to be a party to the Convention and why did it take so long to get there?

LISA COLLSTE: This was a bold step by the EU to accede to the Convention. I mean, the EU acceded only with regards to the parts that fall within the EU's exclusive competence. So that concerns judicial cooperation in criminal matters, asylum and non-refoulement, and also for the EU's public administration.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: When you say public administration, you mean the EU institutions themselves.

LISA COLLSTE: Yeah, exactly. So the EU is bound to implement this. But actually most of the Istanbul Convention is now largely covered in the EU-acquis and therefore falls within its exclusive competence. And therefore it's binding as any other kind of EU law. So this is now part of the EU-acquis. And that is for all the EU's 27 member states, including those countries who have not yet ratified the convention. So they are also bound to implement these parts of the Convention. And it's true that it took some years to get here. There were discussions about the legal basis and also if the decision to accede needed full support in the Council, basically that all 27 member states had to support this. So for this, the European Parliament asked for an Opinion from the Court of Justice. And to make a long story short, the Court of Justice confirmed which legal basis the EU could use to accede and also that a qualified majority of Member States [was] enough.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: This takes us briefly into the weeds of EU external relations law, which happens to be a pet topic of mine. But put simply: for a long time, the Council and many member states followed a “common accord” practice, meaning that for mixed agreements, the EU would only ratify once all Member States were on board. And of course, with several member states unwilling to ratify the Convention, that effectively meant the EU could never accede. So in its Opinion, the Court ultimately said that it's legitimate to try to bring every Member State on board, but that this cannot be made a precondition. In the end, accession should be decided by qualified majority [voting]. So that cleared the way for the EU to accede. And once the Convention became part of EU law, it also began to shape the Court of Justice’s case law. And we saw that recently in the W.S. case. Could you walk us through what that case was about and what the Court decided?

LISA COLLSTE: This was a preliminary reference from Bulgaria, and it concerned a woman who had fled from Turkey, and she had been a victim of forced marriage and also domestic violence within this marriage. And she was fearing that if she would return, she would be a victim of continued domestic violence, and she was also afraid that her family would need to restore her honor. 

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: So she was afraid she would become the victim of honor killing.

LISA COLLSTE: Exactly. So then the Court had to see if this would be enough to guarantee her asylum or refugee status. And here the Court held that EU legislation in this area, which is the Qualification Directive, needs to be interpreted in light of the Istanbul Convention. And it confirmed that gender-based violence can amount to persecution and thereby create grounds for international protection.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: So that means asylum authorities must take the risk of honor killing into account when deciding whether a woman can be returned to her country of origin. And it's interesting, of course, that the case came from Bulgaria, a member state that has not yet ratified the Istanbul Convention. 
How is compliance with the Istanbul Convention actually monitored? How do we know whether the parties are living up to their commitments?

LISA COLLSTE: Yeah, the Istanbul Convention has a monitoring mechanism, which consists of this group of experts on combating violence against women and domestic violence, also called GREVIO. And they evaluate how each party has implemented the Convention. So when a party has acceded to the Istanbul Convention, like the EU recently did, GREVIO will launch a baseline evaluation procedure on how well that country or the EU has implemented the Convention on an article-by-article basis. So since the EU acceded to the Istanbul Convention, it will also go through GREVIO’s independent evaluation of how we have implemented the Convention. So we decided to create two contact groups. One contact group focusing on the public administration of the EU. And then we also created a contact group focusing on judicial cooperation in criminal matters, asylum and non-refoulement, and how the EU has implemented the Convention in this regard. And here, this is mainly the adoption of the Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: That's a perfect segue into the directive, which was adopted in 2024. What was the aim of that directive, and why was it seen as necessary at EU level to have a directive on violence against women?

LISA COLLSTE: Well, we should remember that equality and non-discrimination are actually core values of the EU. And in light of these specificities of violence against women and domestic violence and the prevalence of violence against women and domestic violence in Europe, there was a need for a specific directive. And we could also see that the existing rules at national level had proven to be insufficient to combat violence against women and domestic violence. 

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: And how does the Directive relate to the Istanbul Convention? Does it mirror it, does it build on it or go further in certain areas?

LISA COLLSTE: The Directive is really the EU's key way to implement the Istanbul Convention as regards the parts fall under judicial cooperation in criminal matters. So the directive builds on the convention and it includes the four Ps, the prevention, the prosecution, coordinated policies and protection.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: So, the Directive covers much of the same ground as the Istanbul Convention. It requires member states to criminalize specific forms of gender-based violence, to ensure access to justice and effective investigations, to put in place support measures like shelters and helplines, among other things. But there are also some important differences. And one area where the Directive differs from the Istanbul Convention is in its attention to cyber violence. Why was it important to regulate online violence explicitly?

LISA COLLSTE: Yeah, there is now an additional protocol to the Istanbul Convention. It covers this and GREVIO often makes recommendations as regards to cyber violence. But it was not included, the criminalization of cyber violence was not included in the Istanbul Convention, probably because at that time it was not yet as big as it is today. But we have seen a huge increase during the last years and it keeps on increasing. So for this reason, the Directive covers the non-consensual sharing of intimate or manipulated material, cyber stalking, cyber harassment, and cyber incitement to violence or hatred. We know that women are 28% more likely to be affected by, for instance, non-consensual sharing of intimate or manipulated materials. It's about images, videos, or similar material that depicts sexually explicit activities or intimate parts without that person's consent. This is something that really hurts our young generation of women and girls.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: So this is again one of those crimes that disproportionately affects women.

LISA COLLSTE: Yes, but men and boys are also victims of these crimes, but sometimes targeted in a different way. For instance, when it comes to sexual extortion, here we can see that women are often targeted in the way that they are asked to share more pictures. Meanwhile, boys are often targeted, but they are asked to pay money.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Cyberviolence may be an area where the Directive goes further than the Istanbul Convention by being more specific but in other respects the Directive is less detailed. For example it does not contain a definition of gender and it also does not include a definition of rape. And that's a point I'd like to focus on. Why was the decision taken not to define rape in the Directive? Can you say something about that?

LISA COLLSTE: Yes, the Commission's proposal for this Directive included a definition of rape based on a lack of consent. That this should be a crime in all Member States. That all Member States should have to define rape based on a lack of consent. 

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Can we take a step back for a moment? Because this really comes down to the difference between a consent-based definition of rape and a coercion-based definition. Could you explain that distinction and why it matters?

LISA COLLSTE: Well, it's about the requirements and the elements of the crime. If you have a system that requires coercion or threats, then the act of rape can only happen if a person forces the other person to have sex based on violence or threats.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: So, the implicit image underpinning a coercion-based criminal law approach is basically one of rape as a form of violent overpowering, say, at knife point. But in reality, that is not how sexual assault often happens.

LISA COLLSTE: No exactly, this is based on a false assumption, I mean, of course there are still rape cases that happen in this way, but we know that the most common forms of sexual violence or cases of rape happen not because of force or coercion, but because the person simply did not consent. I mean, the violence is not the central part, it's having sex against your will. That's why it's so important to define rape based on the lack of consent, because I think that's the central point here.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: And when you shift the focus to consent, you also avoid those deeply problematic debates about whether someone resisted, how forcefully they said no and so on, which is often where you end up in a coercion-based system. So you capture more cases where victims are, say, just frozen or passive out of fear, right? Or am I oversimplifying?

LISA COLLSTE: No, that's true. We know that the most common reaction of victims of sexual violence is that they freeze. We have data showing that 40% of all victims actually freeze in this situation and they are not able to do or say anything. So it's very important that we have a definition that covers all acts of non-consensual sex. So it should also cover situations where the woman freezes or where the person is sleeping, etc.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Sweden is one of the Member States that have moved to a consent-based definition of rape. That obviously matters for criminal justice, but did it also have a broader effect in terms of how Swedish society understands what rape is?

LISA COLLSTE: Yes, the biggest change that we could see in society was the discussion that this fueled and the way that people start to look at sex, basically, and the reason that this needs to be based on consent. And it can start [at] very early ages that you start to speak about what you want and what you don't want. This is my body and I decide what I want to do with that. So it [led to] a big normative change, I would say, [in] society and the discussions. And that was probably the most important change. 

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Are there many other member states that have made that change to their criminal laws?

LISA COLLSTE: Yeah, now the big majority of EU Member States have adopted consent-based rape legislation. France adopted it very recently. And it's also a requirement under the Istanbul Convention.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Okay, but even if most Member States have now moved to a consent-based approach, some still rely on a coercion-based definition. So how did that play out in the Council discussions, given that the directive ultimately does not require Member States to adopt a consent-based definition of rape?

LISA COLLSTE: Yeah, it was this discussion of whether it was covered by the legal basis of sexual exploitation of women and children. And here the Commission and the European Parliament would argue that this did fit in, but a high number of Member States in the Council did not agree with that assessment. But what is interesting to see here is that the Commission has now proposed the criminalization of rape based on lack of consent in the revision of the Child Sexual Abuse Directive. And here, the Commission proposed the same wording as was proposed in the Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence. And both the Parliament and the Council have now agreed to this inclusion. Of course, it will only cover rape of children who are above the age of sexual consent, normally above 15, but still below 18. But if this provision is included in the final version of the revision of the Directive, it would send a very strong signal across Europe that we have agreed to a consent-based definition of rape, and we will have juveniles who grow up in a society where they know that non-consensual sex is rape. And this is also actually part of the Violence Against Women Directive, that there needs to be education in this regard.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Member States have until June 2027 to comply with the Directive. Where do you see the main implementation challenges emerging?

LISA COLLSTE: I think it's a bit too early to say what the challenges will be. Of course, for some Member States, the directive will require a lot. And it will really require [their authorities] to coordinate, not the least with women's rights organizations, to ensure that each Member State can live up to the requirements in the directive. And then I think Member States should really learn from each other, and there need to be best practice sharing. And here I think the group of experts GREVIO will be very important, because for once we have recommendations [from] an expert group in the process of the implementation of the directive.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Looking beyond the implementation of the directive, what else do you think needs to happen at EU level, nationally or more broadly in society, if we are serious about reducing gender-based violence.

LISA COLLSTE: I think everything has to start with an understanding of how prevalent this violence is and that it is preventable and that we can stop this. We can change this. So we need to speed this up to ensure that our children at least can grow up in a society where they can be who they are, and where they can be safe in all areas of life, on the boulevards, in the bars and in the bedrooms. I think this should be our objective. And for this, we need to act and we need to act now.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: All right, and finally, as always, what are three books you'd recommend to the audience?

LISA COLLSTE: The first book I would recommend is the book Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez. And this book really shows how we have a world that is built on male default data, which systematically overlooks the way women are experiencing life. And this goes from anything from cancer treatment to urban design and how we decide to take away snow from our streets. And then secondly, I would recommend Who's Afraid of Gender by Judith Butler. And this is an interesting explanation of the anti-gender movement. And it really shows how it is misrepresenting and weaponizing democratic values and gender equality, LGBTIQ rights. And then lastly, I would recommend a book that was very important for me. It's called Under the Pink Blanket, by a Swedish author, Nina Björk. It's from 1996 and it really was an eye-opener for me when I read this a long time ago, because it showed how gender stereotypes are placed on us from our very birth, when we girls were put under a pink blanket and boys under a blue blanket, and how these social norms and expectations really affect the way we live our lives from the very first day.

FELIX RONKES AGERBEEK: Lisa, thank you very much.

LISA COLLSTE: It was my pleasure to here.