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A majority of young European men and women avoid scenarios and visiting certain locations out of fear for their physical safety, according to a new survey.
Europeans aged 16 to 29 have been found to be some of the most cautious when pre-empting physical violence compared with people from older age groups, but young people also have a higher chance of experiencing physical violence, according to findings by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights’ crime, safety and victims’ rights survey.
Almost one in 10 (9 percent) EU citizens said that they had experienced violence between 2014 and 2019. The numbers were highest in Estonia (18 percent), Finland (16 percent) and the Czech Republic (16 percent).
Eighty-three percent of women aged 16 to 29 said they avoid certain areas for fear of assault or harassment. This is also the case for 58 percent of similarly aged men. Of those, 41 percent of women and 25 percent of men said they avoid being alone with somebody they know out of fear of assault.
The inclination to avoid certain areas increased where a person had experienced physical violence in the past: Thirty-seven percent of women in the EU27 who had experienced violence in the past said that they took care to avoid “situations they perceive to contain a risk of physical or sexual assault or harassment,” compared with 21 percent of women that had not experienced any form of physical harassment.
Conversely, many EU citizens (40 percent) consider harassment and physical violence as a “not serious enough” crime to report to authorities, with the Finns (89 percent), Latvians (85 percent) and Estonians (83 percent) being among the most reluctant to report incidents involving physical violence. Countries more likely to report physical violence to the police are Italy (40 percent), France (40 percent) and Germany (37 percent).
The survey polled 35,000 people in all 27 EU nations, alongside the United Kingdom and North Macedonia. Polling took place between January and October 2019.
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