Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-14-Speech-2-052"
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"en.20060314.7.2-052"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, this House has, for a long time, been calling for an Equality Institute; not only do we raise this demand every year on International Women’s Day, but we also want to see real improvements in the quality of equality policy, and that is why we endorse the Commission’s proposal.
The Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, with the object of guaranteeing broad support, entrusted the work on the report to the two major groups, in the persons of Mrs Sartori and myself. We agreed on compromises and jointly tabled a series of amendments generally aimed at slimming down the administration and ensuring the primacy of policy-making. We want to avoid duplication and prevent overlaps with other agencies. We want to ensure that all the expertise on equality issues that is to be found in the national institutes – the gender experts, the universities, the non-governmental organisations – can be drawn together into one network. We have proposed additions to the Commission proposal with the intention of involving civil society in an advisory role.
The Gender Institute will have a very important role to play in ensuring that we, as political decision-makers, can speedily draw on the results of gender research and thereby improve the lawmaking process. It is intended that the Institute should be a centre of excellence, and independent, although it will, of course, follow the guidelines set by the European Union and by our policies. It will be a milestone, and will have an effect far beyond the borders of the European Union, but there is a risk that people will say – as some Members of this House are already doing – that we do not want an institute specifically for gender issues, but that it should, instead, be combined with the Human Rights Agency.
The great danger of that, I think, would be that it would no longer be ensured that the European Union’s programmes were visible to the public. As with the equality programme, what is needed is an instrument with an outward effect. I do not believe that PROGRESS has enabled us to ensure visibility, and we must have the certainty that the Equality Institute will do that. What is needed is a small, high-class institute that works to powerful effect.
Saying ‘no’ to it today would be a major setback to the European Union’s equality policy, and a major setback too to the equality roadmap that was so convincingly presented last week. It was Mr Barroso, the President of the Commission, who set out the timetable last week. Let us, by saying ‘yes’ to the Sartori/Gröner report today, ensure that the timetable can be kept to and that there are no delays."@en1
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