During an informal meeting in Bucharest on Wednesday 10 April, the competent Ministers renewed their commitment, to combat inequalities between men and women at work.
During this meeting, they spoke out to improve women's access to work at national level in all sectors of activity and to work to improve the balance between professional and private life while guaranteeing the principle of equal treatment, including with regard to pay, as provided for in the European pillar of social rights.
Above all, many Ministers called for gender equality to be put at the top of the European political agenda as part of a new gender equality strategy. A gender equality strategy is already in place and will be completed by the end of 2019 (https://bit.ly/2RDLvFV ).
The situation, although slightly improving, remains worrying. During the discussions, the Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs Marianne Thyssen recalled that the work remains considerable, pointing out that gender inequalities (the employment rate for women is 11.5 points lower than for men and the pay rate is 16 points lower) represent a loss of around 370 billion euros each year for the European economy.
Words, but no budget. On the same day, the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) issued a call to the European institutions and Member States, deploring the fact that less than 1% of the Structural and Investment Funds is devoted to gender equality in the next multiannual financial framework. The Institute makes a series of recommendations, such as making gender equality a priority throughout the next multiannual financial framework or introducing a gender equality monitoring system in all funding programmes.
European elections. Fun Europe ('Feminists United Network Europe'), a pan-European European electoral platform, launched a petition on Friday 12 April to unite feminist forces across the Union to counter the proliferation of far-right and nationalist forces that “threaten democracy, human rights and the rule of law”. To consult the petition: https://bit.ly/2IfOlf5. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)