Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-01-Speech-3-101"
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"en.20000301.6.3-101"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, the reason why I was so pleased with your intervention was that you had the courage to list the Member States where the political representation of women is a success, such as, for example, in Finland, France and Sweden, and equally, you had the courage to list the Member States where things in this respect are not going so well, such as, for example, my own country and Greece too, which you forgot to mention. Moreover, I have heard that for the next elections, it appears that very few women will feature on the electoral lists in Greece. I think this is a very sad state of affairs.
I appreciate your courage because I think that it is high time that we in the European institutions started to offer concrete instruments to help put more women on the political agenda. This is why I think it is important that this Parliament continues to press for quotas and that this is openly included in the resolution. I myself, Commissioner, am a product of quotas. I do not believe that any of the MEPs will be able to prove that I am any less competent as a result. It appears that the meritocracy in a number of our European countries is still so biased in favour of males that women simply do not stand a chance.
It is true that a number of countries in the European Union have already introduced quotas, and you yourself made reference to Belgium, Commissioner, where it has not really taken off. Hardly surprising, would you not agree, Mrs Avilés Perea, not because we failed to find the necessary candidates, but because recent scientific research, instigated by the Commission, has shown that quotas are, in fact, only useful if women are placed in the appropriate safe seats. This is why we need to be sensible about applying quotas.
Indeed, Minister, we should strive for a democracy based on equal representation as a new social contract. But we should draw the necessary conclusions from this. The electoral system which corresponds most closely to this model is the one-for-one system, as is being applied in Sweden on a voluntary basis. I would suggest the following: where possible, apply it on a voluntary basis, where there is reluctance, impose it. I hope that in the fifth action programme, Minister and Commissioner, benchmarking will enable the best practices of those countries to be carried through, for it is time that our groups gained an understanding of this."@en1
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