Victim Support Europe (VSE)

Gender inequality remains a structural reality that exposes individuals to violence, limits autonomy, and restricts access to fundamental rights. Victimisation has profound and long-term consequences, affecting safety, wellbeing, access to justice, social inclusion, and economic independence. While victimisation affects all genders, certain forms of violence disproportionately impact specific groups.

Trafficking in human beings remains a persistent and adaptive form of organised crime in the EU, increasingly enabled by digital technologies and structural vulnerabilities. While the recast Anti-Trafficking Directive strengthens the legal framework, experience from the 20212025 Strategy shows that victims continue to face serious barriers in practice.

Online fraud constitutes one of the most significant and rapidly evolving security threats in the European Union, yet its human impact remains frequently underestimated. Crimes such as identity fraud, relationship and trust fraud (including romance scams), consumer fraud, investment fraud, sextortion and grooming rely heavily on psychological manipulation, coercion and deception.

Victim Support Europe (VSE), representing its members, argues that the protection of children from crime should be approached through a child-centred, victims rights and risk reduction framework. It highlights the need to address both online and offline victimisation, including sexual abuse and exploitation, grooming, cybercrime, hate crime, trafficking, recruitment into criminal activity and emerging AI-enabled…

Victim Support Europe (VSE) welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the development of the EU Tourism Strategy and highlights the urgent need to better protect and support tourists who fall victim to crime while travelling. Tourism must not only be competitive, green, and digital, it must also be safe, inclusive, and rights-based.

Victim Support Europe (VSE) is the leading European umbrella organisation advocating on behalf of all victims of crime, no matter what the crime, no matter who the victim is. VSE represents 78 member organisations, providing support and information to more than 2 million people affected by crime every year in 36 countries.