August 22, 2026

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The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

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Korea Signed a Digital Trade Deal That Nobody Has RatifiedCritical Minerals in Mongolia Still Have to Cross Two BordersCan an Indonesia Trade Deal Survive Two Years of RatifyingCross-Border Data Orders Went Live Before the Plumbing DidPlatform Work Rules Take Effect in December and Few Are ReadyCan Europe’s Firefighting Fleet Keep Pace With EU WildfiresThe AI Act Deadline Passed on 2 August and Nothing BitWhy Construction Keeps Shrinking While Confidence ImprovesAccession Talks Stall Again and September 1 Is the TestBrussels Applied a Trade Deal It Cannot Yet RatifyAfrica’s Power Market Now Needs Money More Than BlueprintsLong-Term Budget Talks Enter Autumn Without a Council LineForeign Subsidies Enforcement Now Turns on a Dublin RaidWho Writes Europe’s Telecom Rules Once Copper DisappearsDisability Cards Exist on Paper and Nowhere Else Until 2028Losing Visa-Free Travel Now Takes a Thirty Percent SwingTwenty Flagship Actions Will Test Whether the Culture Compass WorksEurope’s Quality Jobs Act Now Rests on What Unions Do by SeptemberDoes a Three Euro Parcel Duty Change Anything About Cheap ImportsEurope’s Satellite Constellation Grew by 66 Before a Single LaunchKorea Signed a Digital Trade Deal That Nobody Has RatifiedCritical Minerals in Mongolia Still Have to Cross Two BordersCan an Indonesia Trade Deal Survive Two Years of RatifyingCross-Border Data Orders Went Live Before the Plumbing DidPlatform Work Rules Take Effect in December and Few Are ReadyCan Europe’s Firefighting Fleet Keep Pace With EU WildfiresThe AI Act Deadline Passed on 2 August and Nothing BitWhy Construction Keeps Shrinking While Confidence ImprovesAccession Talks Stall Again and September 1 Is the TestBrussels Applied a Trade Deal It Cannot Yet RatifyAfrica’s Power Market Now Needs Money More Than BlueprintsLong-Term Budget Talks Enter Autumn Without a Council LineForeign Subsidies Enforcement Now Turns on a Dublin RaidWho Writes Europe’s Telecom Rules Once Copper DisappearsDisability Cards Exist on Paper and Nowhere Else Until 2028Losing Visa-Free Travel Now Takes a Thirty Percent SwingTwenty Flagship Actions Will Test Whether the Culture Compass WorksEurope’s Quality Jobs Act Now Rests on What Unions Do by SeptemberDoes a Three Euro Parcel Duty Change Anything About Cheap ImportsEurope’s Satellite Constellation Grew by 66 Before a Single Launch
August 22, 2026

Newsletter

The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

LATEST
Korea Signed a Digital Trade Deal That Nobody Has RatifiedCritical Minerals in Mongolia Still Have to Cross Two BordersCan an Indonesia Trade Deal Survive Two Years of RatifyingCross-Border Data Orders Went Live Before the Plumbing DidPlatform Work Rules Take Effect in December and Few Are ReadyCan Europe’s Firefighting Fleet Keep Pace With EU WildfiresThe AI Act Deadline Passed on 2 August and Nothing BitWhy Construction Keeps Shrinking While Confidence ImprovesAccession Talks Stall Again and September 1 Is the TestBrussels Applied a Trade Deal It Cannot Yet RatifyAfrica’s Power Market Now Needs Money More Than BlueprintsLong-Term Budget Talks Enter Autumn Without a Council LineForeign Subsidies Enforcement Now Turns on a Dublin RaidWho Writes Europe’s Telecom Rules Once Copper DisappearsDisability Cards Exist on Paper and Nowhere Else Until 2028Losing Visa-Free Travel Now Takes a Thirty Percent SwingTwenty Flagship Actions Will Test Whether the Culture Compass WorksEurope’s Quality Jobs Act Now Rests on What Unions Do by SeptemberDoes a Three Euro Parcel Duty Change Anything About Cheap ImportsEurope’s Satellite Constellation Grew by 66 Before a Single LaunchKorea Signed a Digital Trade Deal That Nobody Has RatifiedCritical Minerals in Mongolia Still Have to Cross Two BordersCan an Indonesia Trade Deal Survive Two Years of RatifyingCross-Border Data Orders Went Live Before the Plumbing DidPlatform Work Rules Take Effect in December and Few Are ReadyCan Europe’s Firefighting Fleet Keep Pace With EU WildfiresThe AI Act Deadline Passed on 2 August and Nothing BitWhy Construction Keeps Shrinking While Confidence ImprovesAccession Talks Stall Again and September 1 Is the TestBrussels Applied a Trade Deal It Cannot Yet RatifyAfrica’s Power Market Now Needs Money More Than BlueprintsLong-Term Budget Talks Enter Autumn Without a Council LineForeign Subsidies Enforcement Now Turns on a Dublin RaidWho Writes Europe’s Telecom Rules Once Copper DisappearsDisability Cards Exist on Paper and Nowhere Else Until 2028Losing Visa-Free Travel Now Takes a Thirty Percent SwingTwenty Flagship Actions Will Test Whether the Culture Compass WorksEurope’s Quality Jobs Act Now Rests on What Unions Do by SeptemberDoes a Three Euro Parcel Duty Change Anything About Cheap ImportsEurope’s Satellite Constellation Grew by 66 Before a Single Launch

Victims Rights Get a New Strategy Before the Old Rules Even Land

Konstantinos Kavafis
Senior Reporter, Justice and Fundamental Rights

Strasbourg: The European Commission has opened a twelve-week public consultation on a new EU strategy on victims rights, launching it only weeks after the co-legislators signed off a revised Victims’ Rights Directive that member states will not finish transposing until 2028.

The sequence looks odd at first glance. Parliament and the Council settled the revised directive in June 2026, and the Council formally cleared it on 8 June. Capitals then received 24 months to write the text into national law. The Commission is now designing the political framework meant to make those rules work before a single national parliament has amended a criminal procedure code.

Commission officials defend the order. Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath argues that legislation alone has never delivered for victims, and that a strategy exists precisely to close the distance between what a directive promises and what a person walking into a police station actually receives. He is right about the distance. The 2020-2025 strategy, the EU’s first on victims rights, spent five years chasing implementation failures in the original 2012 directive that the revision has only partly fixed.

The revised text does add hard obligations. Victims will report crimes through electronic means, an EU-wide helpline will carry support and information across borders, and stronger safeguards will shield victims’ contact details from the people they accuse. Each of those depends on national infrastructure that does not yet exist in most member states, which is exactly where a strategy earns its keep or fails to.

The Commission has invited victims themselves, support services, prosecutors, judges, civil-society groups and academics to submit views. That breadth carries a risk. Consultations dominated by organised stakeholders tend to produce documents reflecting what the sector already believes rather than what victims report, and the 2020 strategy drew criticism on exactly those grounds.

Money is the harder question, and the consultation does not really pose it. The 2026 Rule of Law Report, published on 17 July, flags under-resourced justice systems and lengthening case backlogs across several member states. Victim support services sit at the end of that queue. A strategy that hands new tasks to national authorities without settling who pays will meet the same wall the last one did.

Timing still matters for anyone hoping to shape the outcome. Contributions filed now land while the Commission drafts, not afterwards. Once the strategy is adopted, the 2028 transposition deadline becomes the only remaining lever, and that lever moves slowly.

The Commission has published details of the strategy in preparation, and the Council has set out what it agreed in June. Read together, they show an institution building the scaffolding while the building is still going up.

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