EU Parliament: plenary meeting to discuss Russian military threat to Ukraine. Legal proposal to stop gender-based cyber-violence

The plenary session of the European Parliament will be starting in Strasbourg today (13-16 December). Because of the pandemic situation, the MEPs can choose whether to attend the session physically or remotely. Tomorrow afternoon, the MEPs will hold a debate with Josep Borrell, in charge of the EU foreign policy, about the Russian military build-up along the Ukrainian border. “Russia recently sent thousands of troops near the Eastern border of Ukraine, even if the Russian government denied to have any plan to attack its neighbouring country”, a note from the EU Parliament points out. “The Western leaders, including those of the USA, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy, invited Russia to defuse the current tension and warned it that they are ready to respond firmly to any Russian aggression, for instance by issuing steep economic sanctions”. A resolution will be voted on next Thursday. This afternoon, instead, when opening the session, the MEPs will adopt some proposals “to stop gender-based cyber-violence, in the light of the worrying rise in the number of victims during the Covid-19 pandemic”. The legal proposal submitted by the committees for women’s rights and civil liberties states that “the EU does not have an applicable legal framework to fight gender-based cyber-violence and a minimum level of protection and redress for the victims”. The European Union “needs therefore a directive that provides a common definition of criminal law for cyber-violence to ensure cross-national convergence. It should also include harmonised fines and protective mechanisms in keeping with the standards laid down in the Istanbul Convention”. The voting is due to be held tomorrow.
Valentina Bombelli