Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-07-Speech-4-015"
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"en.20020207.2.4-015"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Euro-Mediterranean cooperation is a political vision and a vital project for the EU. But it is not just a sound method of promoting its economic interests; the main objective is to create an area of peace, security, stability and prosperity.
The history of European unification teaches us that, unless there is prosperity for all, men and women alike, there can be no zone of peace and stability. At present, the role of women in this process of cooperation is marginal or focused on the economic sector, with negligible results as regards improving their standard of living, whereas our committee believes that such a political vision should consider women to be instrumental in promoting cohesion, peace and sustainable development.
The aim of this own initiative report is to assess policy to date, to urge the European Union to implement all the necessary policies to promote the social, political and economic rights of women in the Mediterranean and to urge the partner countries to assume their responsibilities and rise to the challenges inherent in this objective by all possible means. Assessing the situation is no easy task, because there are considerable variations from one country to another. There is a lack of statistical data broken down by gender, an absence of studies by the European Commission and the national governments effectively evaluating the impact of Euro-Mediterranean cooperation on the promotion of women’s rights and a special regional Mediterranean programme has yet to be applied.
Generally speaking, unemployment also affects women with a university education and illiteracy is on the increase. Early marriage and other entrenched customs mean that girls often drop out of school. There is evidence of entrepreneurship in the Maghreb, but the lack of financing and credit facilities tends to block women's initiatives. Violence, poverty and poor health among women are also commonplace, as is their absence from or under-representation in decision-making posts and, hence, their absence when Euro-Mediterranean cooperation is being negotiated and planned. Tradition and religious stereotypes affect legislation, the ratification of international agreements and the application of such agreements.
Our committee calls for the effective implementation of what has already been laid down in the Barcelona Declaration regarding progress towards democracy and respect for human rights and for the gender dimension to be incorporated in the three pillars of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership. It also calls for association agreements to incorporate an explicit provision on protection for
women's’ rights and also to provide for a policy
for monitoring such
protection.
We are delighted that the study and the first regional Mediterranean programme for women have already been decided and we call on the Commission to take a global political approach, rather than confining the programme to vocational training, and to provide all the tools needed so that the issue of sexual equality can be dealt with in the broadest possible context, as it is in the countries of the European Union which apply this principle. The European Commission and the Commissioner, who is present here, are experienced in drawing up and applying this sort of programme in the Member States and candidate countries and we believe that this experience will stand them in good stead when it comes to drawing up the regional Mediterranean programme.
Similarly, our committee is in favour of supporting women's organisations in the partner countries and of networking them with women's organisations in the Member States of the European Union. We predict even greater potential for cooperation with women's organisations and social agencies in the candidate countries and the Balkans because the entire region is responding to the challenge of stability and peace by mobilising civic society. In addition, having noted that the European Investment Bank has no budget for financing and supporting women's activities, we are in favour of a study into the possibility of creating a Euro-Mediterranean Development Bank for the Euro-Mediterranean zone because we feel that this will give women and women's organisations a chance to develop and obtain facilities and credit. We are also in favour of setting up a database and observatory to monitor this progress and the compilation of data used to assess and plan future policy.
We also paid close attention to the problems of women immigrants from these countries in the European Union and we call for the red tape and other obstacles to legal immigration into the Member States of the European Union to be lifted, because we believe that they result in poverty, marginalisation and the exploitation of human and, more specifically, women's lives. These phenomena have been denounced repeatedly, both by our committee and by the European Parliament as a whole.
This report is the result of excellent collaboration with the other political groups and I should like to thank my fellow Members for their amendments and for working with us and to ask you to endorse the report in its entirety."@en1
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