ENVR Working Programme 2025

The work of ENVR will cover a wide spectrum of the victims’ rights area in line with the relevant legal instruments, in particular the Victims’ Rights Directive^[1], the Compensation Directive and the Directive on combating terrorism^[2], moreover in line with the EU Strategy on victims’ rights (2022-2025)^[3] the EU Gender Equality Strategy (2020-2025)^[4] and the relevant Council Conclusions.

In 2025, ENVR intends to pay particular attention to topics which are affected by the Proposal for the amendment of the Victims’ Rights Directive.[5]

The following working topics are envisaged by the Association of the European Network on Victims’ Rights. The below listed working topics include as well the suggestions made by the national experts. Beyond the below priorities, activities may address further issues that are of interest to professionals. Moreover, ENVR remains responsive to situations and urgencies by taking additional activities and working topics, if necessary.

1. Events

• Generic network

Activity: Expert Meeting

Programme: Spring Expert Meeting (1 whole day personal event in mixed plenary and workshop format)

Day 1 – Expert Meeting

Working topics:

• Updates of the EU policy actions and the activity of the rotating Presidency of the EU Council
• Improving the provision of information to victims

Communication with victims – levels and methods of reaching out to victims 1) providing general information to public about victims’ rights (national/regional/local level; to the whole public/to specific victims’ groups 2) providing specific information to victims in concrete cases

• 1) Identifying, reaching out to and supporting victims of online crimes (all victims). 2) Good practices of supporting and protecting elder and child vicitms of online threats

Programme: Autumn Expert Meeting and Seminar (2 whole days personal event in mixed plenary and workshop format)

Day 1 – Expert Meeting

Working topics:

• Updates of the EU policy actions and the activity of the rotating Presidency of the EU Council
• National coordination mechanisms and protocols (presentation about how to prepare protocols, roundtable discussion on good practices of cooperating with other actors: improving cooperation with health care services, educational institutions and judiciary. Good practices of organizing trainings for partner institutions
• Supporting victims at courts

Day 2 – Seminar

The Seminar will continue to discuss the situation of vulnerable victims. Discussion topics focus in 2025 on victims of domestic violence and juvenile victims.

Working topics:

• Supporting victims of domestic violence reaching out to victims of domestic violence, helping the report of the crime, available specific support services)
• European Protection Order – the practical emergence from the victims’ aspect
• Juvenile victims (teenagers and young adults): reaching out to juvenile victims, helping the report of the crime, available specific support services

Activity: Focus Group Meetings (2-4 online meetings in 2025, organized in specific topics)

Working topics:

The thematic to be decided depending on the focus interest of the participating countries and the priorities of the EU-policy. Call for topic requests of Focus Group Meetings will be issued by the Association at the beginning of 2025.

• Compensation Network

Activity: meetings of the Compensation network (4 workshops in 2025, of which 2 are personal and 2 are online meetings)

Working areas:

• Continue discussing practical matters arise in the operation of domestic and cross-border management
• Discussing about the creation of standardised procedures for secure data exchange between all support and decision-making authorities of the Member States, preferably via a secure EU platform
• Discussing about the introduction of standardised application deadlines for all countries, in particular the introduction of a minimum deadline of 1 year from the final court judgement in the case
• Continue to improve national compensation authorities’ access to information on each other’s schemes
• Improve communication and collaboration between national compensation authorities (e.g. by using English as official language for exchange between authorities)
• Developments of national state compensation schemes
• Other forms of financial support to victims
• Restorative justice for victims
• Continue to improve information provision to victims and make efforts for increasing the number of reached victims in cross-border cases
• Building relations with units responsible for compensation in countries outside of the European Union
• Discussing EU-level policy relevant for the area of compensation

 SCPOVT Network

Activity: meetings of the SCPOVT network (4 workshops in 2025, of which 2 are personal and 2 are online meetings);

Working areas

• Continue exchange of good practices of supporting and protecting of victims of terrorism
• Discussing EU-level legal instrument evaluations and legislative proposals related to the area of compensation to crime victims (when they arise);
• Operative cooperation within the SCPVOT Network (implementing the SCPVOT Operational Protocol)
• Continue to build cooperation with institutions outside of the EU

• For all branches of ENVR

Activity: Study visit (2 study visits in 2025)

Duration: 2 days per visit

Working topics:

The thematic to be decided depending on the focus interest of the visiting and the hosting countries. The visiting and hosting countries are to be selected after an open call will be issued by the Association at the beginning of 2025. Experts from all the three branches of ENVR are welcome to apply for this programme.

The structure of the events in 2025

1. Desk researches aim to reveal the national practice of different aspects of victims’ rights by collecting data on the 1) victims of online crime and the 2) national coordination mechanisms and protocols.

The outcome of the desk researches is a comprehensive comparative study.

AENVR is furthermore facilitating research efforts of Member States on various topics by provision of contact details for conducting questionnaires and disseminating survey results from Member States on the www.envr.eu website.

• Online hub

AENVR continues in 2025 to run its various online dissemination platforms (hereinafter referred to as Online Hub) with the purpose of providing information to both professionals and public about different aspects of victims’ rights. The parts of the Online Hub are:

ENVR website (target groups: public and professionals)

The ENVR website is operated with a public interface to inform general public and also with a qualified site developed for professionals with the purpose to disseminate professional information even between the events. The website includes, by today, interface offering a wide range of information to experts in general and, it has dedicated subpages for single contact points for victims of terrorism, and for single contact points of compensation, a dedicated page on supporting victims of core international crimes, and a page dedicated to international cooperation. AENVR is committed to continuously monitor the needs for information to spread that could help professionals, and it continuously develops and tailors the content of the website accordingly.

Find my victim support service online tool (target groups: public and professionals)

The database aims to map the general and specific victim support services, including accessibility data, in the Member States. The data base serving dual purpose: on one hand it can facilitate the cooperation between national authorities by functioning as a catalogue of profile and accessibility data of national victim support services including contact data of colleagues working at those, and, on the other hand the public interface of the database can facilitate the general public to access to public information on accessibility of national victim support services, therefore it can function as an international victim referral system. This can be especially useful in cross-border cases. The data is searchable by the location of the offence and, by the type of crime in the below categories. The database presently available in 22 EU languages and in Ukrainian in the following 8 categories: general information, victims of terrorism, victims of human trafficking, victims of gender-based violence, child victims, victims of sexual abuse, information on compensation, available support mechanisms for victims of war crime. The database is available from the www.envr.eu website. The ‘Find my victim support service’ can be reached at two levels. Professionals, after registration, can access to more detailed contact information which is useful for practitioners in networking. The public level, without registration, contains the public contact information of the support services.

Find my best practice online tool (target group: professionals)

The Find my best practice tool was developed and introduced in 2024. Over the years, the networks of ENVR dealt with several topics related to victims’ rights, in form of different workshops and desk researches. The outcomes of these activities are archived on the website and available there. The Find my best practice tool is a searching engine – based on a similar idea like the Find my victims support service tool – by code words it is able to list the relevant documents. The code words can be freely typed in the tool or can be chosen from a roll-down list.

1. Activities in the area of supporting victims of war crimes

In the second half of 2022, AENVR extended its activity to the area of supporting victims of war crimes, and the topic was assigned to agenda of the Generic Network. So far AENVR expanded its online victim referral tool ‘Find my victim support service’ by the new category of war crime victims and translated the whole tool into Ukrainian language as well; prepared a paper introducing the support structures available in the Member States for war crime victims; and monitored the development of these structures. The work for war crime victims will continue in 2025 primarily by discussing the current situation of war crime victims with the relevant Ukraine based organisations and involve them in the work of ENVR.

[1] Directive 2012/29/EU on establishing minimum standards on the rights, support, and protection of victims of crime

[2] Directive (EU) 2017/541 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2017 on combating terrorism and replacing Council Framework Decision 2002/475/JHA and amending Council Decision 2005/671/JHA

[3] EU strategy on victims’ rights (2020-2025) (here)

[4] EU Gender Equality Strategy (2020-2025) (here)

[5] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_3724