Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-23-Speech-2-231"
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"en.20011023.11.2-231"2
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"Mr President, there is a German proverb that says good things are worth waiting for. However, I remain to be convinced, especially now that I have heard what the rapporteur had to say, that everything will turn out for the best in tomorrow's vote on the recommendation for a second reading on the directive amending the important 1976 directive. I honestly have to say that the progressive Council common position came as a pleasant surprise after the botched first reading in this House, which my group had very little to do with. I could even have lived with the text proposed by the Council. We could have avoided the risks of having too many new amendments at this stage and wasting valuable time on laborious negotiations on resolutions. But that was not to be, since the Committee on Women's Rights and Equal Opportunities once again failed to recognise the truism that the better is the enemy of the good.
Because of our persistence, Mrs Ghilardotti and I, the spokespersons of the two major groups in this House, which are needed to muster 314 votes, have succeeded in persuading the rapporteur not to table yet more superfluous amendments which really give women out there very little except semantic self-opionatedness and confused ideology. We now have before us a number of new amendments from the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance, to which the rapporteur belongs. This directive is one of the EU's most important pieces of legislation. It needs to be clear and legally tenable. Above all, it should not be overloaded with excessive verbiage that really has no place in a legal text which will have to be interpreted by the judges of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. Those judges to whom I have read the newly tabled definitions of harassment and sexual harassment in the workplace are totally horrified.
In particular, I wish to emphasise that the Council has recognised men's right to paternity leave. We really had to use our powers of persuasion to convince the rapporteur not to include in the text the idea that not only any discrimination against women but also against men in connection with pregnancy or maternity should be regarded as discrimination in the context of this directive. However, we ultimately succeeded in making it clear that men can still not become pregnant and accordingly cannot give birth!
At the last moment, the rapporteur – who tabled an amendment contrary to the agreement we had reached – wanted to reinsert a provision to the effect that discrimination against men and women in the context of reconciling family and career duties counts as discrimination for the purposes of the directive. This would have no benefit at all, apart from encouraging litigation, and especially litigation advocated by people who exploit woolly provisions of this kind. Many of us still have problems with legal actions taken by associations and the requirement for employers to produce complicated annual reports and statistics.
Then I would like to mention equal pay. There is a directive dating from 1975 on equal pay for equal work or work of equal value. That directive is certainly in need of improvement, but in its own context and not this one. We are calling on the Member States to take measures to ensure that employers promote equal pay for equal work in a planned and systematic way. That is mistaken for a number of reasons. First of all, there is the autonomy of the two sides of industry – the employers and the unions. In this context, any demand that employers should promote equal pay for equal work would fall short of the provisions of the 1975 equal pay directive.
There is a French proverb that says ‘
’. However, that does not apply to legislative texts. I hope that in the interests of equal treatment of men and women we will concentrate on the essentials and eliminate anything superfluous when we vote tomorrow."@en1
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"Superflue, chose très nécessaire"1
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