Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-12-Speech-2-380"
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"en.20061212.46.2-380"2
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".
Mr President, I start with many thanks to my co-rapporteur and to the Commission. We have worked together very well in attempting to get the Institute up and running as soon as possible, and we have been very successful in this. I would, however, ask, Mr President, that all services be again reminded to check that versions of the report in all languages use gender-sensitive language, which is not universally guaranteed in my own language – German – despite repeated calls for this.
For as long as the European Parliament has been in existence, we have presented ourselves as an engine of equality. For ten years now, we have been discussing how best to facilitate the establishment of an institution that would pursue gender mainstreaming and draw on the best outcomes from all countries in performing its horizontal task. Following a feasibility study, demands were made for the Gender Institute, to which the Council acceded nearly two years ago now, when it resolved that the Institute would be set up, and on a budget-neutral basis. What does that mean? In practice, it means that the Gender Institute will be funded from what was the gender equality programme. The Budget was halved, and what was left of the programme then became part of the social action programme ‘Progress’. Such is the price that women have had to pay. If certain parties are going to claim that the Institute costs too much, the response will have to be that, on the contrary, women have paid a lot for it.
Here in this House, though, with a great deal of support from women’s groups, we have managed to advance the Institute’s cause. We want it to work independently in facilitating the centralisation of information on tried and tested model procedures for the best possible equalisation of opportunities. We would like to see these examples collected from all countries and the abolition of the gulf between the legal position with regard to equality of opportunity – as found, for example, in the European treaties, as Article 3 once more confirms – and the discrimination that actually goes on from day to day.
We want women no longer to earn something like 30% less than their male counterparts. In the case of those who preside over this House, that may well not be so, and may even be cause for amusement, but when a woman working on a production line earns 30% less than her male colleagues, it is not funny any more. We want all the Member States to have access to information on how to successfully combat violence, forced prostitution and sexual exploitation, along with a Europe-wide exchange of information on how discrimination based on gender may be brought to an end in the twenty-first century.
I have already stressed that the agreement we reached in committee came about rapidly. The Commission was highly supportive in accepting at once 35 of the 50 amendments that we adopted at first reading, although there were others for which we had to fight. We had to fight hard to get a hearing for the head of the Institute – and I want to emphasise that I am not gender-neutral about this, in that I expect the Director appointed to be a woman – but we did manage to get it, together with a smaller Management Board. It is far from clear why each and every Member State should be represented on the Management Board, for the end result of that would be that only 13 people would be doing the work, with 33 monitoring them, and that makes sense to nobody.
We want the European Gender Equality Institute to do groundwork of the European institutions, and the assistance of experts to enable us to do our work in this House more efficiently. How, though, can it be – and this I see as the big drawback – that the Council should decide, as it did last week, that the Institute should end up in Vilnius? That is a long way away from the places where decisions are taken. A working institute such as the Gender Equality Institute does not have any representative function and should not go where it can boost a country's image, but should, on the contrary, be close to our spheres of government; the effect of this is to weaken it. We wanted to see the institutions supported in their work and that work being efficient and helping to make equality a political reality.
That is why I think the proposal we produced is a good one, and am asking this House to agree to the compromise we have worked out with the Council, and for broad-based support for the European Institute for Gender Equality. We have opened up the way to an early agreement, and I again thank all those who had a hand in this, particularly the Commission, which made repeated attempts to bridge the gulf that divided Parliament and the Council on this. I reiterate my thanks to all those who worked with us, in particular the shadow rapporteurs from all the groups. One can expect the Gender Institute to achieve lift off some time soon, and that will represent the passing of a milestone, but there will still be much work to be completed if the great tasks are to get done.
Grateful though I am for the willingness to work together with us on this front, I do want to ask who would actually be able to head up this Institute; it would have to be someone capable of offering not only expertise, but also the necessary insider knowledge of the European institutions, and the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality will take great care to ensure that the Institute does not end up with someone from the Council or the Commission who is incapable of performing this function. If we manage to get to grips with the maintenance of a large-scale network of women’s organisations – which is what we envisage doing – that will make the establishment of this Institute an enormous leap ahead for the women’s movement in Europe."@en1
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