At a press conference on January 30, Poland’s new prime minister, Donald Tusk, stated that his government is fully committed to respecting the Istanbul Convention – or to give it its full name, the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence – reversing a process initiated under the previous conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government that could have led to the country’s withdrawal from the international treaty.

“Protecting women and children against violence is something that should not be the subject of political conflict,” Tusk said in announcing the decision. “Rather, it should be the subject of our common care, to make sure it is implemented as soon as possible.”

Poland ratified the Istanbul Convention back in 2015, but campaigning by conservative groups in the subsequent years pressured the PiS government to put withdrawal from it on the political agenda.

In 2020, the then-prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki asked the Constitutional Tribunal to analyse the convention’s compatibility with the Polish constitution, which was widely understood as a way for his government to ‘park’ the contentious issue: not taking the drastic step of actually withdrawing Poland’s participation from the international pact, but also not being seen by local conservatives as accepting the document.

At the time, Morawiecki described the Istanbul Convention as an “ideological” document and said his government shared some of the apprehensions of conservative critics over certain wording in the text, which they argued promotes “gender ideology”, as it depicts gender as a social construct rather than a biological reality. He also said Poland was already doing enough to combat domestic violence.

As BIRN revealed at the time, the PiS government not only raised doubts in the public’s mind about the convention, but also took steps to convince other governments in the region not to ratify it. Further, PiS proposed to these other governments an alternative treaty, drawn up by ultra-conservative Catholic groups in Poland, that would see both abortion and gay marriage banned.

Mikolaj Czerwinski of Amnesty International Poland told BIRN that his group was pleased to hear Tusk was withdrawing the “dangerous” petition submitted by the previous government to the Constitutional Tribunal, which could have led to the Istanbul Convention being declared unconstitutional.

“The Istanbul Convention is crucial, as women in Poland are still not safe, and it sets the highest standards of protection against domestic and gender-based violence,” Czerwinski said.

Ratting on ratification

The Czech Republic’s populist government of Andrej Babis was one of those CEE countries that PiS targeted in 2020 in its bid to halt ratification of the Istanbul Convention in favour of its alternative treaty more aligned with the notion of the ‘traditional family’.

In fact, Babis had already soured on the Istanbul Convention as far back as 2018, when he told women’s rights groups, including the Czech Women’s Lobby and Amnesty International, that any discussion of ratification would be a “waste of time” considering that Czech laws already sufficiently protected women from domestic and sexual abuse.

Czechia’s government later quietly withdrew the topic of the Istanbul Convention from the agenda, with little to no explanation. In doing so, it fell into line with its neighbours, Slovakia and Hungary, which are two of a total of six EU signees to the convention that have still not ratified it.

Three and half years later on January 24, and under a new democratic coalition government of five parties, Czech lawmakers finally got the opportunity to vote on its ratification.

Yet despite a last-minute appeal by President Petr Pavel, an emotional plea by Senate President Milos Vystrcil and seven hours of heated debate, the 81-member Senate rejected its ratification, only two votes shy, with 34 in favour out of the 71 senators present.

“We are very disappointed with the result, but we still consider it an achievement that more senators were in favour than against,” Hana Stelzerova, founder and director of the Czech Women’s Lobby, told BIRN.

Minister for European Affairs Martin Dvorak was more forthright, calling the rejection an “international disgrace”.

While a debate on the convention was supposed to take place in the more powerful lower house of parliament, the Senate vote now makes that unlikely. “Unfortunately, I don’t see much room for a return to ratification in the near future,” Stelzerova lamented. “We may have to wait a long time again.”

The arguments ranged against the convention mirrored those in Poland and showed Czechia’s deep susceptibility to discourse surrounding the so-called “culture wars”, as well as the current government’s faint-heartedness in tackling widespread disinformation on the issue and dispelling notions that its ratification would mean the death of traditional family values.

Analysts insist most of the controversy surrounding the convention are all but absent from the actual text, from claims that Czechia would be forced to legalise same-sex marriage, to recognising a “third sex” legal status or granting refugee status to transgender people. Some even expressed fear that adopting the convention could be used to stamp out local traditions, such as the one of merrily whipping young girls and women on the legs at Easter.

“Unfortunately, finding new things that others in Europe have not noticed is a Czech political hobby,” political scientist Jiri Pehe told Czech Radio. “With this decision [not to ratify the Istanbul Convention], I think the Czech Republic to some extent moved closer to countries like Slovakia or Hungary.”

Keen not to highlight divisions within the coalition – the conservative KDU-CSL is strongly opposed to it, the ruling ODS deeply divided on the issue, while representatives of the TOP 09, STAN and Pirate parties are in favour – or give ammunition to the populist right, a cautious Prime Minister Petr Fiala carefully avoided taking a definite stance on the matter. Instead, he argued that some senators were merely in too much of a rush to ratify a convention that Czechia signed way back in 2016.

Taking convenient refuge behind the government’s approval in December of a new legal definition of rape meant to increase the protection of victims of sexual assault, the prime minister now insists that, Istanbul Convention or not, Czech laws are being appropriately reformed and heading in the right direction.

Indeed, Czech MPs are expected to start discussing reforms to the Czech Criminal Code on Wednesday that will base cases of rape on the absence of consent rather than the threat of violence or the use of force – a change in definition that the Istanbul Convention, ironically enough, calls for.

However, a case in January that saw a court hand down only a suspended sentence to a man found guilty of raping his teenage stepdaughter over the course of several years brought hundreds of protestors onto the streets in Prague, to vent their frustration at what they call the persistent “trivialisation” of sexual violence in a country where half of rape convictions end in a suspended sentence.

Other priorities for Poles

While activists applauded the Polish prime minister’s decision on January 30 to take action on the Istanbul Convention, they also highlighted how in reality this is one of the few areas where he is able to act in favour of women in a fast and efficient manner after eight years of foot-dragging by the PiS government.

Human rights activists and the Polish Ombudsman, for example, have for years demanded the same kind of changes to the rape laws that should soon be introduced in the Czech Republic, moving away from a definition of rape as sexual intercourse resulting from “violence, unlawful threat or deceit”, to one that equates rape with a lack of consent.

“Poland still does not meet all the standards of the Istanbul Convention, and therefore we call on Prime Minister Tusk to take the next necessary steps to provide safety for women and children in Poland and fully implement the convention, including changing the definition of rape so that it is based on consent rather than physical violence or resistance,” Czerwinski of Amnesty told BIRN.

Of even greater resonance amongst the Polish public is abortion. The right to abortion was tightened even further under PiS, making it illegal with the exception of when the mother’s life is at stake or the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest (a third situation, when the foetus has severe abnormalities or disease, was excluded).

Women’s rights activists expect the new government to take action on this matter, especially given that Tusk promised liberalisation of the new draconian abortion laws during the election campaign.

The problem is that despite both Tusk’s Civic Platform and The Left filing draft laws to liberalise abortion, the government’s third coalition partner – an alliance between Poland 2050 of the conservative Catholic Szymon Holownia and the agrarian PSL – is unlikely to support either of the bills, making it difficult for the government to muster the support needed in parliament.

And even if a bill does somehow find the backing of a majority in parliament, it would then have to get past the veto of the country’s PiS-allied president, Andrzej Duda.

“Women helped the current government win,” Kamila Ferenc of the Federation for Women and Family Planning told The Guradian. “There were a lot of declarations, a lot of promises.”

Anything less than liberalisation of the abortion laws, she said, “will be disgraceful and a disrespect towards a huge number of women in Poland.”