28 Sep 2026
La Strada International has contributed to the call for evidence for the upcoming EU Strategy on Victims’ Right. We welcome the European Commission’s initiative to develop a new EU Strategy on Victims’ Rights for the coming years and support the Commission’s five proposed priorities while stressing the need to translate them into concrete, measurable actions that close the gap between victims’ rights in law and in practice, and that trusted NGOs are meaningfully included in legistive, implementation and monitoring process, including in the National Referral Mechanisms.
Read the full contibution here.
1. More effective crime-reporting systems, including through greater societal awareness
- Establish clear firewalls between victim support and justice systems and immigration enforcement, ensuring that a victim’s residence status is not shared with or used by immigration authorities for enforcement purposes because the person reports a crime or seeks protection. Reporting should never expose victims to detention, deportation, retaliation or other adverse consequences.
- Strengthen and encourage third-party reporting mechanisms, allowing victims to report through trusted NGOs, health services, labour organisations and other intermediaries. Member States should establish clear legal and practical frameworks for third-party reporting, including protocols for cooperation between NGOs and law enforcement, safeguards for confidentiality and data protection, and clear procedures for follow-up. Specialised NGOs should receive adequate funding, training and institutional support to safely fulfil this role, while ensuring that victims retain control over their information and participation in criminal proceedings.
- Provide reporting and support information in languages and formats that victims understand and through channels accessible to vulnerable and isolated groups.
- Ensure reporting procedures are safe, child-sensitive, trauma-informed and accessible to persons with disabilities.
2. Timely access to support tailored to victims’ needs and available for as long as necessary
- Ensure timely, unconditional and needs-based access to support, irrespective of whether a victim reports a crime or cooperates with proceedings. Support should be available before, during and after criminal proceedings and should not depend on whether an investigation results in prosecution or conviction.
- Ensure that support remains available for as long as necessary, including after criminal proceedings have ended.
- Invest in sustainable, high-quality victim-support systems, including safe accommodation, legal assistance, healthcare and psychosocial support.
- Strengthen access to trauma-informed mental health and psychosocial care, recognising that recovery often requires long-term support.
- Ensure individual needs assessments take account of intersecting vulnerabilities, including age, gender, disability, residence status, economic vulnerability and dependence on the perpetrator.
- Strengthen national referral systems while ensuring that formalisation does not create additional barriers to support.
- Specialised civil society organisations are often the first point of contact for victims and provide essential services that public systems cannot always provide. Their role must therefore be recognised and sustainably funded.
- Ensure access to both general and specialised services, including services for victims of human trafficking and gender-based violence.
- Ensure that undocumented and otherwise hard-to-reach victims can access support through outreach and community-based services.
3. Effective access to justice for victims and ensuring their voices are heard
- Free, specialised and effective legal aid for victims where necessary to exercise their rights, regardless of nationality, overlaping criminal issues or residence status.
- Clear and accessible information about rights and procedures in languages and formats victims understand.
- Measures to reduce excessive delays in criminal proceedings.
- Effective safeguards against secondary victimisation, intimidation and retaliation and appropriate procedural measures enabling vulnerable victims to participate safely in proceedings.
- Training for police, prosecutors, judges, lawyers, labour inspectors, immigration authorities and victim-support professionals on victims’ rights and trauma-informed approaches.
- Early and effective application of the non-punishment principle.
- Secure and autonomous residence solutions for victims where necessary for their protection and access to justice.
4. Appropriate protection and preparedness, including in times of crisis and in response to new forms of crime
- Ensure European and national action plans and strategies include measures and actions to respond to emergencies
- Strengthen research into technology-facilitated victimisation and emerging forms of crime.
- Ensure victim-support organisations and public authorities have the necessary digital expertise and capacity or a supported to obtain this
- Enhance safe digital reporting mechanisms while maintaining non-digital alternatives.
- Ensure privacy and data protection are embedded by design in reporting, referral and monitoring systems.
5. More effective compensation and restoration
- Ensure recovered criminal assets and appropriate corporate fines can be used to compensate victims.
- Establish or strengthen national compensation funds and ensure all victims of crime have access, regardless of nationality or residence status.
- Ensure victims are not required to pursue perpetrators themselves through lengthy and potentially retraumatising enforcement procedures and encourage or consider advance payment of compensation where perpetrators fail to pay.
- Address unpaid wages and other financial losses as part of effective remedies for exploited workers.