The objective of the meeting was to gather the input of the Victims’ Rights Platform on the upcoming revision of the Victims’ Rights Directive. The main options for the revision of the Directive was already presented to the participants through a Discussion Note circulated in advance to the meeting. The participants were the EU-level organisations competent in the field of victims’ rights, as the ENVR, Eurojust, Fundamental Rights Agency or European Judicial Network in Criminal Matters.

ENVR was able to make a number of observations. On the issue of the access to information concerning victims’ rights, ENVR welcomed the establishment of a central helpline for crime victims and underlined that one of the main challenges was the language barrier and the increase of the cost of the helpline to make it available in several languages. ENVR promoted the idea that professionals operating the helplines should receive relevant training and insisted on the need for quality standards for the helpline. ENVR also stressed the difficulty of implementing the helpline in decentralised Member States.

On the subject of the protection of victims, ENVR agreed on the importance to associate victim support services to individual assessments, but underlined that authorities and notably police officers need training to carry out individual assessments and to correctly differentiate between risk assessments and needs assessments and that non-governmental organisations should cooperate with authorities on creating checklists, which should be used for individual assessments.