“By the end of 2026, women will be able to submit complaints directly to hospitals,” said Aurore Bergé, Minister responsible for Equality between women and men.

Tuesday, November 25 is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. In this context, the future legal framework for violence against women includes 53 measures aimed at “better training, better detection, better prevention and better punishment”, Aurore Bergé announced on Monday 24 November. She hopes that the text, long requested by feminist associations, can be put on the parliamentary agenda “as soon as possible”.

This text corresponds to the transcription of the interview section above. Click on the video to watch the full interview.

Gilles Bornstein: Today is the international day for the elimination of violence against women. Suffice it to say that we are very far from that: +11% feminicide cases in one year, 107 feminicide cases in the last year. We look at the numbers. Is there more violence against women or is it more freedom of speech, the fact that we talk about it more?

Aurore Berge: When we talk about femicide, it is women who are killed at the hands of their partners or former partners. Last week, six women were murdered, four of them on Thursday alone, four of whom had nothing to do with the murders. They don’t come from the same major, don’t come from the same social background, and aren’t the same age. The only thing they have in common is that at one point, they declare to a man: “I will leave you”. And there are still men in France who consider women to be their property. So this is the struggle that we have to do, the cultural struggle, the educational struggle, and also the legal struggle to change a number of ideas. Violence is not just beatings, not just sexual violence and there are many other things in general that happen before getting there.

In November 2017, Emmanuel Macron, newly elected President of the Republic, made equality a key national goal. He wants to fight violence. Even Sandrine Rousseau, at the time, said “we have changed the times”. In this area, as in many others, we get the impression that there is still disappointment on the part of those who really believe in it.

This remains the main goal of the two five-year terms of the President of the Republic. You remember that in 2017, when he ran his campaign and announced it, many scoffed, saying that it was not a serious enough topic to be a major issue and making it one of the main pivots of his program. A lot has developed in eight years. There has been real progress in the means, laws that have been changed, and tools available to protect women.

We’ll talk about how again.

Ministry resources tripled, emergency accommodation, equipment provided for women, serious danger phones, anti-reconciliation bracelets…

Facilities are increasing, but needs are increasing. So the gap between means and needs is increasing.

So there are two additional needs because, you said it yourself, and better yet, there really is the word liberated and the State that accompanies it. How do we support it? We train massively. Today, there are 200,000 law enforcement officers, police and constables, who have been trained to welcome and hear women’s voices. There are laws that are also gradually evolving to ensure that we understand what is meant by the issue of violence, judges who have been trained, new tools. A protection order is in place.

Police departments complained that they did not have the means to train enough police officers to collect speeches.

After all, 200,000 police and police officers have been trained. They are trained in initial training and continue to be trained in further education. Currently, a woman who wants to file a complaint can do it at the police station, she can do it at the gendarmerie, she can do it especially at the hospital. We guarantee that by the end of 2026, in all hospitals that have emergency or gynecological departments, women will be able to file complaints directly, precisely to make it easier to collect those words and so that they do not have to repeat their story or go back to the past.

Click on the video to watch the full interview.