Brussels, 21/05/2003 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, on the initiative of Anna Diamantopoulo, the European Commission approved a draft decision establishing "a Community action programme for promoting European women's organisations active in the area of equal opportunities between men and women". The financial envelope for the period 2004-05 is EUR 2,222,000.
The Commission has indicated that this draft decision aims to establish a legal basis for continuing to finance allocated loans to the European Women's lobby (EWL) and other women's organisation active in Community policies promoting sexual equality. This proposal is therefore launching a Community programme covering a two year period that will end the same time as the Community programme promoting equality between men an women (2001-2005). The spokesperson explained that this proposal aimed to attain more coherency within the new budget structure, which will be changing in 2004 to "activity based budgeting". The Commission believes that Article 13 paragraph 2 of the EC Treaty constitutes "the appropriate legal basis when the objective is to support activities by women's groups beyond the areas of employment and work, with the aim of achieving equality between men and women.