The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) has developed 13 indicators on intimate partner violence and domestic violence. Between 2023 and 2024, the indicators were used to collect national administrative data from the police and justice sectors in the EU-27 Member States, except for Slovakia.
This indicator presents data on the annual number of victims of sexual intimate partner violence, domestic violence, and violence in any relationship, as recorded by the police. Data is presented on the number of female and/or total victims recorded each year, during the period of 2014 to 2022.
Please note, the data collected across Member States should not be compared due to differences in counting rules, data collection procedures, characteristics of victims and perpetrators included, and the types of criminal offences included. Additionally, the data must be interpreted with caution, as it only reflects the number of victims recorded by authorities and does not represent the true prevalence of violence.
Further details on the data
The table below offers additional details to interpret the data collected from Member States. Further details regarding the completeness, accuracy, and comparability of the data are presented in the reference metadata section, and in the methodological report for the data collection exercise. In-depth analysis of the data collected in each country is presented in individual country profiles.
|
Country |
Details regarding the data collected by EIGE |
|
Belgium (BE) |
Data refers to offences, not victims. Data on intimate partner violence excludes current and former non-cohabitating partners. Data on domestic violence refers to all offences between people with family relationships but does not refer to other domestic (non-family) relationships (e.g. friends who share the same residence are not included). For Indicator 6 (victims of sexual violence), the figures on total victims of domestic violence decreases notably between 2021 and 2022. The decrease is due to a change in the offence codes and labels (use by police officers to register offence). |
|
Czechia (CZ) |
Data on intimate partner violence excludes partners if they are not officially registered, do not cohabitate, and there is not ongoing violence. Data on domestic violence excludes intimate partners. For police indicators, a significant change in the recording and counting of victims occurred in 2019. For this reason, data for the police sector indicators is only available from 2019 onwards. |
|
Denmark (DK) |
Between 2015 and 2016, the annual number of female victims of sexual violence increased notably. This rise may be attributed to the introduction of a new ‘rape package’ in 2016 by the Ministry of Justice. |
|
Germany (DE) |
Data on domestic violence excludes non-married and former partners. |
|
Ireland (IE) |
Data refers to victims where the primary incident was classed as a form of sexual violence. |
|
Greece (EL) |
Data on domestic violence refers to incidents involving sexual violence. The comparability of data over time may have been impacted when, in 2019, the Greek police changed their method of recording data on domestic violence to include all relationships that fall under both intimate partner and domestic violence in accordance with the Istanbul Convention. |
|
France (FR) |
Data on domestic violence does not include types of relationships that can exist in a domestic unit with no legal or family ties (e.g. housemates are not included). |
|
Latvia (LV) |
Data on intimate partner violence excludes current and former non-cohabitating partners. Data on domestic violence excludes intimate partners. |
|
Lithuania (LT) |
Data on total victims of intimate partner sexual violence only refers to female victims. |
|
Luxembourg (LU) |
Data on domestic violence represents victims in cases of domestic violence that include sexual violence. They are not necessarily victims of that sexual domestic violence. Data on violence in any relationship represents victims in cases of sexual violence. They are not necessarily victims of sexual violence. |
|
Netherlands (NL) |
For Indicator 6 (victims of sexual violence), data comparability may have been impacted in 2018, when the principal offence rule was removed. |
|
Portugal (PT) |
Data on intimate partner violence refers to domestic violence by an intimate partner. |
|
Romania (RO) |
Police data for 2014 covers 1 February to 31 December (not the calendar year). |
|
Slovenia (SI) |
Data on intimate partner violence appears to exclude former partners who did not live together, do not have a child together, or were not officially registered. |
|
Finland (FI) |
Data on intimate partner violence includes only ‘official’ relationships (e.g. it does not include relationships in which partners do not officially share a residence). Data on domestic violence excludes intimate partners. Sexual harassment was criminalised in 2014 as a separate offence, and new legislation on sexual offences entered into force in 2023 (the definition of rape is now based on consent). These changes may have increased the number of sexual offences reported to police, as more acts and forms of violence are now covered by law. |
|
Sweden (SE) |
Data refers to offences, not victims. Only the years 2020 to 2022 are comparable and have detailed information on the relationship between perpetrators and victims. Statistics on the total number of crimes are available and comparable for the entire period from 2014 to 2022. |
Available flags:
| b | break in time series | c | confidential |
| d | definition differs, see metadata | e | estimated |
| f | forecast | i | see metadata |
| m | imputed | n | not significant |
| p | provisional | r | revised |
| s | Eurostat estimate | u | low reliability |
| x | dropped due to insufficient sample size | y | unreliable due to small sample size |
| z | not applicable |