In 2010, two engaged and courageous Spanish Members of the European Parliament, Carmen Romero López and Teresa Jiménez-Becerril Barrio, started a groundbreaking initiative to improve the protection of women from gender-based violence in the EU, the European Protection Order.
The idea was to establish an EU law regulating the mutual recognition of national protection orders in all EU Member States and guaranteeing victims of violence protection when moving from one country to another. Despite fierce conflicts with the then Commissioner Viviane Reding over the legal competence of the European Parliament for such an initiative, the two European Parliamentarians did not give up. The conflict was eventually settled with the establishment of two types of European Protection Orders.
Download WAVE Fact Sheet on European Protection Orders here (March 2015).
