Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-12-Speech-3-271"
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to congratulate Mrs Avilés Perea – and this is not just a courtesy – because this debate here today really is an important debate, given that the Structural Funds are a very specific application of policy and allow us to measure whether or not it has had any substantive results. Naturally the Structural Funds are also subject to the dual approach to gender equality, by which I mean mainstreaming and specific practices and specific programmes open only to women, what we call positive action.
It is true, as several speakers have said, that this objective is not always achieved. The Structural Funds regulation is an important tool, but it needs to be applied correctly in practice. There are four stages: the conception or planning of the programme, its application, monitoring and evaluation. If the parties involved in these four processes fail to demonstrate the awareness and commitment needed in specific polices, there are no results.
The Swedish Government recently held a seminar for all its ministers. The ministerial council was given a seminar on mainstreaming, at which planning requirements in all the individual political areas were explained. What we have to realise is that political awareness raising is needed among Structural Fund programmes planners, be they at ministerial level or at regional or local level. We do not see that everywhere. I think that there is a serious political deficit in the evaluations carried out. That is my first point.
That brings me to stage two, which is application, and stage three, which is monitoring. The administration – all levels of the administration – play a very important part here, and this refers back to what was said during the debate. The administration in every country, with a few exceptions, is staffed overwhelmingly in the upper echelons by men, with only a few countries arranging awareness raising and training for administrative officials. This means that the special level of awareness needed to help promote objectives, even at this stage, is lacking at the application and monitoring levels. That brings me to the fourth stage, which is evaluation. This is where firms of consultants come in and external offices carry out evaluations. They are instructed to carry out a separate evaluation of the impact of policies and programmes on women in very few instances.
I think that the Commission was quite right to present a communication in December 2002 on gender mainstreaming in the Structural Funds for 2000 to 2006; it could not have done so at a better time. This gives us an initial opportunity, in the first two years’ implementation of the new Community Support Framework, to see if and to what extent Member States have taken account of the gender dimension at the planning stage. We have initial records; we do not have statistics because, as you know, most programmes started up in the last 18 months. What we can see, taking account of subsidiarity in the planning of the Structural Funds, is that a number of good practices and important indicators have been introduced, but only by certain Member States. These indicators include the number of women which have set up their own company, the ratio between the number of programmes for women and other programmes, the percentage of women trained in the information society, which local employment programmes take account of the gender dimension, the percentage of women taking part in training programmes overall and a whole series of indicators which only certain countries use. It is not the rule and I think it would be a good idea if your committee and the members of parliament in each country were to lobby their governments, because we do not have indicators for all the individual programmes and that is what we need.
This communication has come along at exactly the right time, because it gives us the opportunity to consider revising the Structural Funds and changing the distribution of funding and the distribution of the new reserve, in order to take account of how well these programmes perform from the mainstreaming perspective. This interim review will give us ample opportunity, together with the records of what has been happening in the Member States, to see how we can lobby for funds to be redistributed and channelled to specific policies for women.
To be more specific, we need to award extra marks to programmes approved for funding which include the gender dimension. We need special actions to promote these gender equality-related programmes and promotion generally has an exponential effect because it raises awareness among programme planners.
A third important point is the need for more training for senior administrative officials and politicians. More efficient planning depends on training in political parties, governments, local authorities and administrations; naturally, this training for actual programme planners can be funded from the Social Fund without any problem.
My fourth point has to do with preparing the enlargement countries. What we are trying to do from the outset, at least as far as my fund is concerned, is to ensure that there is a senior official in the departments set up in the candidate countries for the Social Fund who is trained and instructed in Brussels from the outset, so that Social Fund planning takes account of mainstreaming right from the start."@en1
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