BRUSSELS — The European Parliament is contemplating altering its guidelines to enhance the gender stability of its committees.
The measures are designed to handle “hanging disparities” within the gender stability of committees and delegations throughout the establishment, in line with an inner letter, seen by POLITICO, from senior Greek MEP Dimitrios Papadimoulis.
Papadimoulis — a Parliament vice-president who chairs a bunch of senior MEPs engaged on gender equality within the establishment — despatched the letter to the Constitutional Affairs Committee final month requesting its assist in altering Parliament’s inner guidelines.
“A attainable proposal could possibly be that not less than it’s wanted to have 30 or 35 % of ladies in every committee,” Papadimoulis mentioned within the letter.
The MEPs in Papadimoulis’ group recommended that the “place to begin” ought to be the Parliament’s present ratio of male to feminine MEPs: 61 % of MEPs are male and 39 % feminine.
“I feel it’s an general technique the Parliament agreed to and it might be an excellent sign earlier than the following European election,” mentioned German MEP Gabriele Bischoff, who sits within the working group that can tweak the principles.
“It’s a large step when you have a look at the present realities and that’s all the time the query,” she mentioned.
In 14 out of 26 committees, lower than 39 % of MEPs are ladies, in line with a doc drawn up in October.
Paradoxically, the Constitutional Affairs Committee tasked with implementing the measure has the smallest proportion of feminine MEPs of all committees, below 15 %.
Different strongly male-dominated committees embrace these protecting overseas affairs, safety and protection, tax, and budgets.
“The place there’s cash and energy you may have male domination. Coincidence? I don’t assume so,” mentioned Robert Biedroń, a Polish MEP who chairs the ladies’s rights and gender equality committee, by far the committee with the best share of feminine MEPs at 86 %. And sure, the ladies’s rights committee is chaired by a person.
“It could be to the shock of many {that a} man is chair of the FMM committee. That’s why we’re additionally doing it to indicate that males must also take care of ladies’s rights and gender equality,” Biedroń mentioned.
In terms of chairing committees, feminine MEPs are additionally under-represented — in comparison with the general ratio throughout Parliament — with seven ladies in such roles and greater than twice as many male chairs.
Three out of seven political teams have a feminine chief: the Socialists and Democrats, Greens and Left. Maltese MEP Roberta Metsola is barely the Parliament’s third-ever feminine president.
The strikes are going down as a part of the Parliament’s five-year “gender motion plan,” which requires higher gender illustration throughout committees and delegations.
“The composition of committees ought to not less than mirror the ratio present in plenary and must be additional improved because it has a direct affect on decision-making,” mentioned a spokesperson for MEP Evelyn Regner who can be a part of the senior gender equality group.
The Parliament’s guidelines already state that decision-makers should take gender under consideration when appointing probably the most senior roles within the Parliament, resembling president and first vice-president, and that the chair and vice-chairs of every committee should not be all male, or all feminine.