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While this paper has drawn on FRA’s existing research to highlight three common findings that run through different FRA surveys and studies, there are many other areas relating to victims’ rights that warrant attention and future research.
One such issue is the increasing impact of online crime on victims. Alongside ‘conventional’ or ‘common’ offline crime that has long been the focus of research on crime victims (ranging from physical assault to property crime), online crime is becoming ever more frequent and encompasses many different types of crime. These range, for example, from incidents of online harassment, hate crime or hate speech online (issues covered in FRA surveys on violence against women and antisemitism, for example, as well as the FRA report Online content moderation - Current challenges in detecting hate speech, 2023, focusing on challenges in detecting hate speech online, to online fraud (with victims’ experiences of such crime covered, for example, in FRA’s Fundamental Rights Survey, 2021).
FRA will expand its research and knowledge base in the coming months and years to inform EU and national policy and lawmaking relating to victims’ rights in this area to achieve the following objectives:
- To support legislative and policy initiatives to address the fundamental rights implications of hate speech online and online platforms’ conduct (which has implications for [potential] victims of hate crime). Results from a FRA project on online content moderation feed into the Commission’s work relating to online content moderation, most notably the Digital Services Act (DSA), based on original data collection from online platforms. Current FRA research also feeds into this work by mapping available (case) law and empirical studies on fundamental rights risks linked to online platforms.
- To increase the knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon of online crime, including how this is experienced by victims, and how to ensure that victims’ rights are guaranteed in an online as well as an offline environment. Building on its existing work on victims’ rights, FRA will begin targeted research in the coming months relating to access to justice for victims of online crimes.
- Beyond the topic of online crime, to explore how the digitalisation of justice can impact (positively and negatively) individuals’ fundamental rights (covering victims of crime, as well as defendants and complainants more generally). FRA will publish guidance in 2025 (based on current research) to help EU institutions and Member States ensure that digitalised justice processes and systems facilitate and protect fundamental rights – such as access to justice – in practice.