Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-06-Speech-4-048"

Predicate	Value (sorted: default)
rdf:type	lpv_eu:Speech2
dcterms:Date	"2003-11-06"^^xsd:date2
dcterms:Is Part Of	lp_eu:Election 2004: balanced representation for women and men2
dcterms:Language	"nl"^^xsd:language2
lpv:document identification number	"en.20031106.3.4-048"2
lpv:hasSubsequent	lp_eu:2003-11-06-Speech-4-0492
lpv:speaker	lp:Nelly Maes2
lpv:spokenAs	vice-chair; G/EFA (2002-01-08--2004-07-19)3 unknown; België Spirit (2002-01-08--2004-07-19)3 substitute; Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy (2002-01-17--2004-07-19)3 substitute; Delegation to the EU-Slovak Republic Joint Parliamentary Committee (2002-02-07--2004-04-30)3 member; Members from the European Parliament to the Joint Parliamentary Assembly of the Agreement between the African, Caribbean and Pacific States and the European Union (ACP-EU) (2002-02-06--2004-07-19)3 substitute; Committee on Development and Cooperation (2002-01-17--2004-07-19)3 member; Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism (2002-01-17--2004-07-19)3
lpv:translated text	"I would like to draw your attention to the greatest inequality of power that exists: the one between men and women, and I would like to thank the for her report, which once again emphasises the need for parity. We still have a long way to go even in this Parliament, where one third of us are women, and the best performing country, Sweden, has recently gone from 40% to 45%; still not parity, although we all envy Sweden. We have made progress in Belgium, going from 11% to 23%. The new countries could learn something from this, as we have put a lot of effort into achieving it. If we leave it to the goodwill of, let us say, men, nothing will change. If we leave it to a change of mentality, then we could still be having this discussion when our great-granddaughters are MEPs. We must make the effort ourselves, and that applies just as much to the new countries. None of these countries reaches the 30% mark which we are already used to here. Only three countries have more than 20% representation by women. Only 14% of their representatives in this Parliament are women. If we have 100 new members of Parliament, then in the worst-case scenario, if the same ratio applies, we will have 86 men and 14 women. This is a general regression for women in the European Parliament. It should not be the case that the accession countries help our Parliament to become even more male-dominated. That is why we in the European Parliament want to give firm support to all women and to all governments who want to change things for the better, because nothing will happen without voluntary action. The quotas are often criticised for not being justified, for having to leave everything to the spontaneous evolution of democracy. Ladies and gentlemen, we are lawmakers, and a lawmaker knows very well that you cannot leave everything to spontaneous evolution and that action is required. The countries where the best results have been achieved have been those governments which have amended their legislation. Let me quote you the example of Belgium, where it is not permitted to have three candidates of the same gender at the top of the European list. We want an equal number of candidates to be put forward now too, and I hope that the excellent recommendations made in this report will be adopted by governments. I expect the Commission to introduce an initiative, I expect initiatives to be introduced by the Council, so that equality in this Parliament, both and does not decrease but improve after accession."@en1
lpv:unclassifiedMetadata	"de facto,"1 "de jure"1

Named graphs describing this resource:

The resource appears as object in 2 triples

Context graph