Brussels has rewritten its victims’ rules and opened a consultation on how to apply them. Neither reaches a person selected for harm on European soil by a foreign government.

On 13 August the Commission opened a public consultation on a new EU Strategy on Victims’ Rights. It runs twelve weeks, closing in early November, and invites contributions from victims of crime, support services, police and judicial authorities, civil society, and academics. It is the successor to the first such strategy, adopted in June 2020 and expiring this year.

The timing is not accidental. On 8 June the Council gave final approval to a revised Victims’ Rights Directive, updating the 2012 instrument that has governed this field for a decade. Parliament carried it in plenary by 440 votes to 49 with 84 abstentions, the directive recording its position as of 21 May, three years after the Commission first proposed the revision. It was signed on 17 June and published in the Official Journal on 30 June as Directive (EU) 2026/1472. Member states have until 2 July 2028 to transpose most of it, and until 2 July 2030 for one element. The strategy now under consultation is the plan for making the new rules work.

What The Revision Actually Delivers

The changes are practical and, on their own terms, worth having. Every member state must operate the 116 006 victim support helpline, which at present only fourteen do, and which in France alone handles more than seventy-two thousand calls a year. Reporting a crime becomes easier through digital means. Victims’ personal data gets stronger safeguards, child-friendly services expand, legal aid becomes more accessible, and compensation is meant to arrive faster.

One addition deserves more attention than it has received. The directive as adopted asks member states to facilitate third-party reporting, so that a person may inform a trained civil society or non-governmental body about an offence, which then notifies the authorities. The rationale given is fear of repercussions and the underreporting that follows from it. That is an instrument built for people who cannot or will not walk into a police station, and it is the closest the revision comes to the problem this article is about.

The Person The Framework Still Cannot See

Consider someone living in a European city who has been selected for harm by a foreign government, because of what they write, whom they support, or which regime they left. The clearest case on the European record is not recent. In 2019 Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Georgian national who had sought asylum in Germany three years earlier, was shot dead in a Berlin park. German federal prosecutors charged a Russian citizen in June 2020, stating that state agencies of the central government of the Russian Federation had tasked him with the killing and that he accepted the assignment. In December 2021 a Berlin court convicted him and imposed a life sentence, finding that the murder had been ordered by Russian state organs. Germany expelled two Russian diplomats in response.

The detail that matters here is what was known beforehand. Khangoshvili had survived earlier attempts on his life and continued to receive threats after reaching Germany. He was not an unforeseeable victim. He was a man whose danger was understood by everyone including himself, and the EU victims’ rights framework did not attach to him until he was dead and a file existed.

The framework is built around the victim of a criminal offence and the criminal process that follows. The revision does not alter that architecture and was never intended to. So the assessment of protection needs, the support services, the information rights, and now the helpline are all oriented to a point at or after which an offence has occurred. The person whose plot is disrupted before it matures has no file. The person who has been warned by a friendly service that they are on a list has no file. The threat to them is at its highest precisely when the framework is silent.

The Case Against Widening It

There is a serious argument for leaving this alone, and it should be stated before it is answered. The Directive rests on Article 82(2)(c) of the Treaty, which permits minimum rules on the rights of victims of crime only so far as they facilitate mutual recognition and judicial cooperation in criminal matters with a cross-border dimension. It is a criminal-procedure instrument by design and by legal base. Asking it to carry a protective status for people a foreign state has decided to harm misreads what it is for, and would invite challenge on competence grounds.

There is also a practical objection. Attribution is hard. A sabotaged cable leaves a trail that can be assembled in Brussels and defended before the General Court. An assassination attempt produces a national criminal file that is normally unusable at Union level until proceedings conclude. Building a status on evidence of that quality risks either an empty category or a contested one.

Both points hold against amending the Directive. Neither holds against the strategy. A strategy is not a legal instrument, and that is exactly why it can go where the Directive cannot: coordination between national protection schemes, a shared understanding among member states of what a state-directed threat to a person looks like, guidance to authorities on when a warning triggers an assessment rather than a referral. None of that requires a new competence. It requires the Union to decide that this category of person exists.

What The Last Strategy Actually Did

Before proposing that a strategy carry any weight, it is fair to ask what the previous one carried. The 2020 strategy committed the Commission to reviewing the 2012 Directive. That review produced the 2023 proposal and the instrument adopted this June, so the revision now in force is itself the clearest thing the last strategy delivered. It also created the Victims’ Rights Platform, which brought the network of national contact points, Eurojust, the Fundamental Rights Agency, the equality bodies, and civil society into one room, and a Commission coordinator to run it. On its own terms, the instrument works.

Where it did not work is instructive. The Economic and Social Committee warned when the strategy appeared that it needed a clear action plan setting out how and when actions would be implemented and what outcomes were expected. Six years on, Victim Support Europe reports that full implementation of the Directive is far from achieved and that infringement proceedings have been opened against twenty-one member states since 2016. The pattern is consistent: what the Commission undertook to do itself, it largely did. What depended on national authorities changing their practice moved much less.

That pattern should discipline what is asked of the next strategy. Proposals that require the Commission to act have a record behind them. Proposals that require twenty-seven administrations to behave differently do not, and should be made knowing it.

What The Consultation Could Usefully Hear

Three submissions, of which the first two ask the Commission to do something it can do itself.

1. Name the category. The strategy should acknowledge, in terms, that people are targeted on Union territory by foreign states for political reasons, and that they are currently reached only after an offence has been committed against them. Naming a problem is what non-legislative instruments are for.
2. Extend third-party reporting to pre-offence warnings. The revision built a channel for people who fear going to the police. The same channel could carry the case of a person who has been told they are a target but has no crime to report.
3. Ask for a shared picture. Europol and Eurojust cooperate on these cases already, but there is no common account of how many such people there are across the Union. A strategy can commission one. Nobody can design protection for a group whose size is unknown.

The Union has spent three years improving how it treats people after something has happened to them, and the improvement is real. The consultation closing in November is about the other half: what it does for the person who knows what is coming. That half has no instrument, no category, and until now no obvious place to raise it. It has one until early November.

---

Note On The Record:
The legislative chronology is taken from Council and Parliament records and from the directive itself as published in the Official Journal. The Council announced its final go-ahead on 8 June; the instrument carries the date of 17 June and was published on 30 June. The consultation is described from the Commission’s Have Your Say page.

The closing date is given as early November rather than a specific day. The twelve-week period was announced; the exact closing date should be confirmed on the Commission page before relying on it.

Victim Support Europe is an interested party in this policy area and is cited as such rather than as a neutral assessor. Its assessment of implementation is an advocacy judgement; the count of infringement proceedings it reports is a tally of the Commission’s own enforcement activity, which is a different kind of claim, and it has not been checked here against the Commission’s record. The characterisation of the framework as unable to reach a person before an offence is committed is the author’s reading of the instrument’s architecture, not a finding by any institution. It follows from the instrument being built around the victim of a criminal offence and the process that follows, an orientation the revision does not change. Several rights under the Directive are expressed by reference to criminal proceedings; the reading here is about the framework’s centre of gravity rather than a claim that every provision is so confined.

The Berlin case is stated from the German federal prosecutors’ charging statement of June 2020 and the Berlin court’s verdict of December 2021, both as reported at the time. No other individual case is relied upon here.

This publication has not made a submission to the consultation. Should it do so, that will be disclosed.

Sources consulted on 20 August 2026. Where a claim rests on a single report it is attributed in the text. Competitor publications are named where relied upon but not linked.

---

Source Register:

Claim	Source, date, and address
Consultation on a new EU Strategy on Victims’ Rights opened 13 August 2026, running twelve weeks, open to victims, support services, law enforcement, judicial bodies, civil society, and academia	European Commission, Have Your Say initiative 18194
Council final adoption 8 June 2026; EU-wide helpline 116 006 currently operated by only fourteen member states; more than 72,000 calls a year in France; publication in the Official Journal in July 2026; 24 months to transpose	Council of the European Union press release, 8 June 2026
Third-party reporting through trained civil society or non-governmental bodies, rationale of fear of repercussions and underreporting	Adopted text, Council register document PE-CONS 11/1/26 REV 1
Directive (EU) 2026/1472 of 17 June 2026 amending Directive 2012/29/EU; published OJ L, 2026/1472, 30 June 2026; transposition by 2 July 2028 except one element by 2 July 2030	EUR-Lex, ELI data.europa.eu/eli/dir/2026/1472/oj
Legal base of the revision: Article 82(2)(c) TFEU	Council of the European Union, document ST-10255-2024-INIT, general approach
Parliament plenary adoption 18 May 2026 by 440 votes to 49 with 84 abstentions	European Parliament legislative observatory, procedure 2023/0250(COD)
Commission proposal of 12 July 2023 to revise the Victims’ Rights Directive	COM(2023) 424 final, EUR-Lex
Directive 2012/29/EU: purpose expressed as ensuring victims of crime receive…	Directive 2012/29/EU, EUR-Lex
First EU Strategy on Victims’ Rights adopted 24 June 2020, running to 2025; commitment to review the 2012 Directive; creation of the Victims’ Rights Platform and a Commission coordinator	COM(2020) 258 final, EUR-Lex
The 2020-2025 strategy envisaged the revision of the Victims’ Rights Directive	European Parliament Research Service briefing on the revision
European Economic and Social Committee opinion that the strategy needed a clear action plan setting out how and when actions would be implemented and what outcomes were expected	EESC opinion on the Victims’ Rights Strategy
Full implementation of the Directive far from achieved; infringement proceedings against 21 member states since 2016. Interested party; the infringement count is its tally of Commission enforcement action and is not verified here against the Commission’s own record	Victim Support Europe, BeneVict report on practical implementation of the Victims’ Rights Directive
A new strategy in preparation following adoption of the revised Directive in June 2026	European Commission, EU Strategy on victims’ rights
Berlin Tiergarten killing of 23 August 2019: German federal prosecutors charged a Russian citizen on 18 June 2020, stating that state agencies of the central government of the Russian Federation tasked him with the killing and that he accepted the assignment	BBC News report of the federal prosecutors’ statement, June 2020
Conviction and life sentence, December 2021; court finding that the murder was ordered on the instruction of Russian state agencies; expulsion of two Russian diplomats; victim an asylum seeker in Germany since 2016 who had survived earlier attempts and continued to receive threats	BBC News report of the verdict and expulsions, December 2021