LES MUREAUX, France (AP) — Sylvia. Dalila. Aminata. Céline. Julie. Their names are plastered on buildings and headlines across France, calling attention to their shared fate: Each was killed, allegedly by a current or former partner this year.

More than 130 women have died from domestic violence this year alone in France, according to activists who track the deaths.

European Union (EU) studies show France has a higher rate of domestic violence than most of its European peers. And frustrated activists have drawn national attention to a problem President Emmanuel Macron has called “France’s shame”.

Under cover of night, activists have glued posters with the names of the dead and calls to action to French city walls. “Complaints ignored, women killed,” read the black block letters on one such sign. They have also posted anti-violence slogans, tagged with Macron’s name.

By the hundreds, women have walked silently through city streets after each new death.

Two years after Macron made a campaign pledge to tackle the problem, his centrist French Government has begun to act.

A justice ministry report released earlier this month acknowledged authorities’ systematic failure to intervene to prevent domestic violence slayings. On Monday, the Government will announce measures that are expected to include seizing firearms from people suspected of domestic violence, prioritising police training and formally recognising “psychological violence” as a form of domestic violence.

Women are not the only victims of domestic violence, but French officials say they make up the vast majority.

Lawyers and victims’ advocates say women are too often disbelieved or turned away by French law enforcement. But they’re encouraged by the new national conversation, which they say marks a departure from decades of denial.

“In France, we always have the impression that we are perfect,” activist Caroline de Haas told The Associated Press.

A 2014 EU survey of 42,000 women across all 28 member states found that 26 per cent of French women respondents said they been abused by a partner since age 15, either physically or sexually.

That’s below the global average of 30 per cent, according to UN Women. But it’s four percentage points above the EU average and the sixth highest among EU countries.

Half that number reported experiencing such abuse in Spain, which implemented a series of legal and educational measures in 2004 that slashed its domestic violence rates.

Conversations about domestic violence have also ratcheted up in neighbouring Germany, where activists are demanding that the term “femicide” be used to describe such killings.

In France, victims and advocates say government action is overdue — and that more training is needed for police who are often ill-prepared to protect women in danger.

Police inaction made national headlines in France after Macron visited a hotline call centre in September and listened in on a call with a 57-year-old woman whose husband had threatened to kill her. He heard a police officer on the other end tell the woman he couldn’t help her.

The hotline operator told Macron that such responses weren’t unusual.

Police officers across Europe often dismiss domestic violence as a private matter and fail to intervene at crucial moments, an EU study found this year.

But France is particularly bad, said EU researcher Albin Dearing, who led a study this year that examined domestic violence in seven European countries, including France.

“When it comes to violence against women, it showed actually that police do very little to protect women who turn to them for protection,” he said.

It can take between three weeks and two months for authorities to act on a complaint, leaving the victim “in a very fragile situation”, according to Frederique Martz, who runs anti-domestic violence organisation Women Safe.

The justice ministry report this month found that 41 per cent of “conjugal homicide” victims studied had previously reported incidents of domestic violence, and 80 per cent of complaints sent to prosecutors went uninvestigated.

“Our system doesn’t work to protect women,” Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet told French TV channel LCI after another French woman was allegedly killed by her husband in Alsace last week.