This Policy Brief exposes how digital tools – from messaging apps to social platforms – are increasingly used to target, manipulate, and exploit migrant women across the Euro-Mediterranean. While phones are vital for staying informed and connected, they also create new entry points for traffickers, abusers, and online networks that operate across borders.

The analysis shows how technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) reinforces existing vulnerabilities linked to displacement, language barriers, legal precarity, and social isolation. Examples from Italy and Ukraine illustrate how fake job offers, online recruitment, digital surveillance, and coercive relationships can begin long before women reach Europe.

Despite pockets of progress, the EU’s current legislative landscape remains fragmented.

Key frameworks – from the Anti-Trafficking Directive to the Digital Services Act – address pieces of the problem but fail to offer comprehensive, intersectional protection for migrant women online.

The Brief calls for a stronger, coordinated response grounded in gender equality and digital safety.

It recommends:
• EU-wide data collection to make TFGBV visible and measurable
• A dedicated Regulation recognising TFGBV and granting protection pathways
• Multilingual reporting systems accessible across Member States
• Stronger cross-border investigations and platform accountability
• Integration of digital safety into EU–MENA cooperation