Chrysochoidis said police logged about 450 complaints per month this year and that 19,500 case files have been opened so far in 2025. In 2024 officers compiled 18,500 files and arrested 11,300 alleged perpetrators; by the first ten months of 2025 some 19,500 files had been submitted and 12,150 arrests recorded.
The minister said one in three women who files a complaint activates the ‘panic button’ on their mobile phone, equivalent to roughly 5,000 installations a year. Use of the service has increased by 12 per cent: last year the system handled about 27,000 calls and so far this year it has handled 30,500.
Chrysochoidis described visits to police stations and domestic-violence units where he encountered women with serious injuries and shock. He said the rise in complaints showed that cases were increasingly being reported rather than remaining hidden.
He highlighted measures intended to protect victims, including exclusion orders that bar alleged perpetrators from approaching partners or children. He said such measures, and the state’s response, formed part of an effort to provide targeted protection.
‘What worries me, but at the same time makes me optimistic, is that on the one hand the incidents are increasing, but in essence the complaints are increasing,’ he said. ‘Where this whole issue was immersed in silence and guilt, it has now come out into the open.’
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