The Works Council's contribution to combating domestic violence

Claude Adrien Helvétius asserted that 'people are so foolish that repeated violence eventually comes to seem like a right to them'. And this is precisely the issue at stake when it comes to domestic violence that goes unpunished. According to statistics from the Council of Europe, in the 2000s, one in five women in Europe was a victim of violence every day. Furthermore, for European women, domestic violence has become the leading cause of injury and death, ahead of road traffic accidents and cancer. These figures are also cited at international level by the World Bank. Given such alarming statistics - which likely fall short of the reality - domestic violence can be regarded as much more than a mere phenomenon. It is, in fact, a veritable scourge, as it is the leading cause of death among women. It is a scourge that is difficult to combat, as awareness of the scale of the problem is particularly recent and has not yet been fully established. The Council of Europe is, nevertheless, making constant efforts to combat domestic violence.