Overview
- The Chamber of Deputies approved the proposal with 227 votes in favor and no opposition, sending the text to the Senate for review.
- The bill rewrites Article 609-bis to define sexual violence through the absence of free and current consent.
- It enumerates three behaviors that qualify as the crime without consent: performing sexual acts on someone, causing someone to perform them, or causing someone to undergo them.
- It preserves, with minor edits, provisions covering coercion through violence, threats or abuse of authority, and exploitation of physical or psychological inferiority or particular vulnerability.
- The text stems from bipartisan work by relators Carolina Varchi and Michela Di Biase after talks involving Giorgia Meloni and Elly Schlein, with supporters calling for training and education to implement the new standard.