Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-13-Speech-4-084"
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"en.20011213.5.4-084"2
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"One of the proposals the Commission is making for modernising reform will extend access to certain family and social benefits to European Union officials who are currently denied such access because they cannot or do not want to enter into conventional legal marriage under the laws of the Member States. I am very grateful to Mr Lund and 32 other Members for initiating this plenary debate which enables me to report to Parliament on the issue of the Commission's intentions and proposals.
When implemented, the measures we propose will recognise and respect certain basic civil liberties. They will foster enlightened attitudes and they will improve the morale and living conditions of many of the valued staff who work for the European Union in the different institutions. I hope that this House will continue to support these reasonable social innovations and I look forward to further constructive discussions.
Under the current Staff Regulations, social and family rights are provided only for couples who are married. Whilst that most obviously refers to matrimony between two heterosexual people, it also relates to homosexuals if homosexual marriage is legally recognised in a Member State. The House will know that the Kingdom of the Netherlands is at present the only European Union Member State where marriage between two people of the same gender is legally provided for.
In the Commission's view, it is sensible to use the opportunity of current comprehensive reforms to revise the Staff Regulations in order to reflect the wide-ranging social change that has occurred in the time since the regulations were established in their present form in 1968. The Commission therefore proposes to ensure that staff who do not have access to marriage under the current national legislation are not discriminated against and to provide improved treatment for people who, for personal reasons, choose not to be legally married. To achieve this, the Commission seeks to provide full statutory recognition and commensurate benefits for all EU staff who are in partnerships that are shown to be stable in nature.
I would ask the House to note that whilst we recognise that not all Member States' legal schemes for such recognition accord equivalent rights and status, the Commission accords equal recognition to all existing national regimes which make provision for stable partnerships. So far as we are concerned, the stable partnerships to be recognised will include homosexual partnerships which will be regarded in the same way as heterosexual partnerships and subject to the following conditions: firstly, the couple must provide a legal document of an EU Member State which acknowledges their status as non-marital partners. Secondly, neither partner may be married or in another non-marital partnership. Thirdly, there must no blood relationship in the first or second line between partners. Fourthly, that the couple must not have access to legal marriage in a Member State.
People in recognised stable relationships that meet these requirements will be entitled to the family-related benefits that, under present Staff Regulations, are available only to heterosexual married couples and to officials who are homosexuals and of Dutch nationality. Those entitlements will include household allowance, health insurance coverage, survivor's pension and annual travel allowance. It will be clear to the House that unlike homosexual couples in all Member States other than the Netherlands, cohabiting heterosexual partners who are not married to other people could, if they so wish, get married. The Commission does not, however, ignore the reality that many people in modern societies wish to sustain stable partnerships but do not wish to enter into matrimony. We consequently recognise that many partners who have not married have family obligations. We therefore consider that those who are registered should be covered by provisions that, for instance, will enable a partner to participate in the European Union civil servant's health insurance scheme and will enable an official to use special leave provisions when, for example, a partner is suffering from a serious illness. The system envisaged for the staff of the European Union institutions largely replicates the system currently employed in the OECD.
To obtain access to certain basic social rights under the Staff Regulations, non-married heterosexual partners must, as indicated, have documentary proof that their partnership is recognised in a Member State, they must not be married or in a non-marital partnership with another person and they must have no blood relationship with their partner. In addition to these two categories of partnerships, where the partners have chosen to be officially registered, there are also a limited number of cohabiting partnerships that are not recognised by any Member State since the people involved have chosen not to seek the legal recognition open to them. In such cases, the Commission proposes that the existing purely administrative recognition of certain partnerships should be maintained. This would, however, be of minor importance and the resulting rights would be limited. For example, partners would continue to have access to established language courses where places are available.
In its reform package of 30 October, the Commission approved the principles outlined above. We also decided to intensify discussions with other EU institutions and with other international public sector organisations in order to develop these proposals further. Finally, we reserved the right to make supplementary proposals after the outcome of the interinstitutional discussions which will commence formally in the early months of next year. The issue of recognised partnerships will be discussed at the next meeting of the heads of administration of all EU institutions. A working group will then further develop the Commission proposal, taking into account the additional information on the situation in other international organisations which is currently being collected. We naturally wish to pursue best practice wherever that is feasible and gains the endorsement of the legislatures, including this House.
At the end of this process, we will transmit our proposals for amendments to the Staff Regulations to the Council and to this House. We hope to be able to do that in the spring of 2002. The date of implementation of these new arrangements, and indeed much else, will therefore depend to a very significant extent on the speed at which they are handled in this House and in the Council. As for the Council, there is nothing to suggest that Member States will raise problems with this approach, particularly since it gives full recognition to the competence of Member States to regulate of marital law. It does not introduce a separate regime for the institutions – indeed, it cannot. This does not preclude the possibility, of course, that critical questions may be raised by Member States in the Council. We shall simply have to wait to see what views are actually expressed.
Finally, a word on costs. For obvious reasons we do not yet know the exact number of recognised partnerships amongst the staff of the institutions or the numbers involved. We can, however, make a reasonable estimate, and on that basis, we can forecast that the budgetary impact of the above measures will be modest. Two hundred and fifty fully recognised partnerships and 250 partnerships with a limited range of statutory benefits would, for instance, generate total annual costs of under EUR 3 million."@en1
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