Referring to the incident - now known as ‘SofaGate’ - at the recent EU-Turkey meeting in Ankara (see EUROPE 12698/10), the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, said on Monday 26 April that he was now “ready to examine” the proposal to create a new EU Council configuration devoted to gender equality.
“In recent days, several of you have written to me to suggest that I use this incident to defend the role and rights of women even more strongly, and I would like to seize this opportunity”, Mr Michel stressed in the hemicycle.
On Thursday 22 April, the President received a letter from the French delegation of the Renew Europe group (https://bit.ly/3npthEQ ), describing as “regrettable” the “symbolic significance” of the event in Ankara and asking the President once again to create a “formal space for discussion and negotiation, which would bring together the ministers responsible for gender equality”.
MEPs, supported by the Commissioner for Equality (see EUROPE 12624/28) and several ministers (see EUROPE 12524/7), have been advocating for some time for such a configuration to be set up: they adopted a resolution to this effect last December (see EUROPE 12625/26).
However, the EU Council had so far remained deaf to these calls.
Charles Michel did not stop there. He also assured MEPs that they could “count on his commitment and best efforts” to “try to mobilise Member States” to relaunch negotiations on the ‘Women on Boards’ directive, blocked in the EU Council since 2013, which aims to introduce a 40% requirement for women on the boards of listed companies. He also said he was ready to commit to the issue of equal pay (see EUROPE 12678/22).
Ursula von der Leyen counterattacks
Charles Michel thus used all the means at his disposal to try to get out of what he once again described as a “protocol incident” (see EUROPE 12699/19) - “the protocol teams did not have access to the seating arrangements before the start of the meeting”, he insisted.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who spoke immediately afterwards, maintained that it was not about “seating arrangements and protocols”, but about “the values our Union stands for”. A speech and a tone in stark contrast to those of Mr Michel.
“I felt hurt and I felt alone, as a woman and as a European”, she said, insisting that she had “not been treated like a European Commission president in Turkey” because of her gender.
Many MEPs then again called on the two presidents to deliver on the promises already made in the fight for gender equality.
The Chairs of the two main political groups, Manfred Weber (EPP, Germany) and Iratxe García Perez (S&D, Spain), also called for efforts to coordinate the protocol in the future. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)