Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-10-18-Speech-1-034"
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"en.20101018.13.1-034"2
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"Madam President, a well-known businessman once said equality legislation, taken too far, actually reduces the chances of women gaining employment.
Businesses are not allowed to ask a woman if she is going to have a baby, so it is easy – they just do not employ her. And that, unfortunately, is the grim reality of compulsory full pay maternity leave in this report.
Couple this with the economic effect on SMEs – in the UK, £2.6 billion; Germany, EUR 1.7 billion – and this report is positively dangerous in today’s economic climate.
However, if the maternity clause were removed, what a difference that would make. The report would focus on its original mandate, that of the health and safety of pregnant workers and those who have recently given birth.
I ask my colleagues in the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality to get back to basics and do what is right for women. Women need to have choices. They need to have the tools to make these choices. Employers need to be able to support women without it meaning they are no longer economically viable. Member States need to strengthen their economies too, thereby creating opportunities.
The ECR has put forward an amendment which deals with many of the issues created by the full pay compulsory leave clause and I would ask my colleagues to support this amendment and make this report workable.
The EU is not here to create social engineering with its policies. The idea that paid maternity leave will encourage women to have children is naive. Children are for life. The cost is for life. So please do not tell me that we will increase the population by giving 20 weeks fully paid maternity leave.
There are a lot of weaknesses in this report. The impact assessment the ECR requested has proved this. The question now is whether we strengthen it at this stage or send it back to the drawing board."@en1
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