Resolution Details

The European Parliament’s resolution, passed by an overwhelming margin, urges all EU member states to adopt a “yes means yes” legal standard for consent while recognizing that a “yes” obtained through coercion is not valid.

The move seeks to replace the traditional “no means no” principle, which activists argue fails to protect victims by not requiring explicit, affirmative consent for sexual acts.

Dutch MEP Anna Strolenberg said that “a society that truly respects women does not ask whether they resisted enough, it asks whether they freely agreed.” She told CNN, “No one can consent while asleep, drugged, unaware or paralyzed by fear. Any law that leaves room for this doubt, leaves room for violence.”

Current Landscape Across Europe

At present, rape laws in Europe generally follow one of two models — consent-based, which considers rape a sexual act without consent, or coercion-based, which requires a sexual act to have taken place by force. Twenty-one of the EU’s 27 member states have adopted consent-based rape laws, according to Amnesty International, with countries like Sweden and Spain following the “yes means yes” approach. In countries like Hungary and Latvia, the law generally requires proof of use of force, threats, or coercion.

Those legislative gaps create significant hurdles for survivors, experts say, as it requires them to prove the use of violence or threats.

Catalysts for Change

French MEP Manon Aubry said in a debate ahead of the vote that laws that do not recognize the importance of active consent allow “perpetrators to have full impunity.”

In October 2025, France, after years of opposition, updated its criminal code to explicitly define rape as any sexual act committed without consent. The move followed a public reckoning in the wake of the landmark Pelicot trial, where 50 men were charged with the mass rape of Gisèle Pelicot, whose ex-husband Dominique Pelicot drugged her and organized her rapes with men he met online.

Irish MEP Maria Walsh said that CNN’s recent reporting on an online “rape academy” accelerated the debate. CNN’s discovery of a Telegram group, where nearly 1,000 men shared step-by-step instructions on drugging and assaulting their partners, underlines “why a European-wide response is so badly needed.”

Next Steps

The resolution is only the first step in the political process: it will now need to be proposed as legislation for EU member states to vote on.

Amnesty International’s Dinushika Dissanayake welcomed the resolution, saying it was an important step in the fight against “rape culture.” One in six women in the EU experience sexual violence in adulthood, according to Amnesty, with one in 10 women raped in their lifetime.

Source: CNN