Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-03-08-Speech-2-013"
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"en.20050308.6.2-013"2
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"Mr President, today being International Women’s Day, it is an important opportunity to draw attention to the fact that women around the world are insufficiently involved in decision-making. I am glad that the Commission, too, will now be joining in our debate, as the questions raised will focus on how the evaluation of the platform for action at Beijing ten years ago has developed as our most important foundation for measures in connection with women’s rights around the world. As I speak, the UN is in session in New York, assessing the outcomes of the Platform for Action, and in this the European Union has a very important part to play. As a rapporteur in Beijing, I did of course follow closely what the European Union was doing and the action it was taking; I did so again five years later at ‘Beijing + 5’ in New York, and now, with a delegation from the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, I am doing the same with ‘Beijing + 10’.
We see it as an important step, and one on which I congratulate the Luxembourg Presidency, to use good and adroit negotiation as a means of defending women’s rights there. The United States of America has pushed hard for the platform for action to be renegotiated in order to spark renewed controversy and gain renewed influence, particularly in matters affecting twelve critical areas – prime among them being reproductive and sexual rights, which, in practical terms, means abortion. The negotiating skills of the Luxembourg Presidency, among others, made it possible to prevent this, but I find it regrettable that the Commission did not put on much of a show in New York, being represented only by one Commissioner, or, perhaps on one occasion, by Mr Barroso.
The questions that we are putting today to the Commission and the Council in those twelve different areas must serve to evaluate progress and, of course, also to highlight the deficiencies in these areas that have yet to be made good. Here in the EU, we have had one report from each Member State; the Luxembourg Presidency has held a conference to collate them and to undertake an assessment. Progress has certainly been made. Where political participation is concerned, we have been successful in raising consciousness. In some countries, there have been breakthroughs; in your country, Mr President, that being Spain, the government is establishing parity between men and women. In the last elections to the European Parliament, we did not experience the invasion we had dreaded and expected after the ten new Member States sent observers of whom only 14% were women. Here, then, things really have been moving. European countries have performed very well in the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s assessment of participation in governments, even though women’s participation stands at only 10% in France and Italy. For that reason, women, and the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, are still calling for quotas, which are necessary if women are to have a share in political decision-making processes.
To that our European anti-discrimination policy has given a great deal of impetus, even though its implementation in the Member States still leaves much to be desired.
Our various actions against violence, such as the Daphne and STOP programmes, have highlighted the need for violence to be curtailed. We have afforded ample consideration to trafficking in women, thereby making it clear that we cannot accept a situation in which up to 500 000 women are smuggled into the European Union in order to be sexually exploited. We find it completely unacceptable that practically one woman in five in Europe should be at least once in her life, the victim of some form of violence.
What we want is a Gender Institute to underpin our work and supply us with statistical data to help combat various forms of discrimination in even more practical and tangible ways. Alongside the integration of women in the labour market, the encouragement of women in time-tested ways, and gender mainstreaming as a framework policy, we want an equal opportunities programme. Something that we certainly want, and on which neither the Commission nor the Council have budged, is a European Year for Combating Violence, which ought to be announced in 2006. Nothing has happened so far; we do not even have practical proposals as to what form the Gender Institute should now take, and so this is where the Commission and the Council still have a great deal of work to do on implementation. Goodwill is not enough on its own; what we need is action. Symbolism is fine on one day – International Women’s Day; we now have 365 of them, full of work to be done."@en1
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