Mr President, I should like to begin by welcoming Mrs Péry back to Parliament. Those of us who have previously heard her in Parliament know that, with her as President-in-Office of the Council, we have a very committed spokesperson for women’s issues, and that is something we need if our plans are to succeed at all. In the committee, we combined three reports from the Commission and dealt with them together. On behalf of the committee, I can promise that, in future, we shall attend to the reports in time so that the Commission does not feel it is engaged on a major task, but that we in the committee are ignoring the fact and not getting our reports ready in time. We have promised ourselves that this will not happen in future. All three reports – I shall return to the speech of the President-in-Office of the Council in a moment – call attention to the articles of the Treaty of Amsterdam and say that, in these, we have obtained a new and sound basis for working on the issue of equality in the Commission and that we have also obtained a number of tools for implementing equality in the different Member States in a way we were unable to do before. This is something which, as women, we should be pleased about. We can say that almost all women have worked hard to achieve a better Treaty where equality is concerned, and I therefore think that we can be quietly pleased with the fifteen men who sat and adopted the Treaty of Amsterdam and were therefore also involved in implementing the principles of equality, even though it cannot, of course, be said that there is much in the way of obvious equality in their own Assembly. There is really a paradox in the fact that we in the EU have, on the one hand, an outstanding basis for equality – especially now with the Treaty of Amsterdam – but that, on the other hand, there are fifteen men in the European Council who make all the decisions, something I shall refrain from commenting further upon. It therefore becomes obvious in one way or another that there is a difference between principles and concrete implementation. I am also saying this because I think it is incredibly important that the EU should be given a stronger women’s perspective, and I say this for two reasons. First of all, we have had a referendum in Denmark which clearly showed that women, more than men, are opposed to this project, and not merely the project involving the euro but the EU project as a whole. In Denmark, we have equality in a great many areas, so women ought not to feel threatened by the project. We see, however, that, on many points, women are opposed to the project to a much greater degree than men. We therefore have some problem or other, and I will venture to say that it is not because we have declined to say that the EU is OK. Instead, it has to do with this overridingly male-dominated agenda, which women have emotional reasons for voting against. Secondly, we are now facing enlargement, and we know that the progressive changeover from state-run to private enterprises affects women more than men. Because a great many of the countries have said that they want to hold referenda, we have the major task of conveying to women in the candidate countries that the EU is good for them. For, if we do not make a special effort in this area, I am completely convinced that there will again be a range of emotional reactions which will not necessarily have to do with the EU clauses but with the fact that the EU is, all in all, a very male-dominated enterprise. In that way, there is a risk of our seeing ‘no’ votes in referenda in the candidate countries, too, and of enlargement failing to go ahead. I would therefore prevail upon the President-in-Office of the Council, both the current and the forthcoming ones, as well as upon the Commissioner, to be alert to this aspect, for I believe that it is absolutely fundamental to our work that we make a very big effort in this area. In connection with the reports, I would also say – and the President-in-Office of the Council touched upon this, too – that one of the major problems in the EU is of course the big cultural differences. It is therefore no wonder that the President-in-Office of the Council is having difficulty getting her action plan through. This clearly shows that the countries have very different interests, but one of the things we have to work on is trying to find out where, in particular, we can make a contribution in the individual countries. I have a dream of our being able to obtain proper statistics for the different areas so that we can obtain indicators for the labour market, education and many other matters in relation to equality. In that way, we shall be able to work on things in very much more concrete terms. I would very much recommend that this be done for the candidate countries too, for it proves to be incredibly difficult to obtain figures from the candidate countries about how responsibilities are divided between men and women in the different areas. I believe that, if we are to be able to deal with enlargement properly, we must also have those figures. There were thousands of other things I could have done with saying. I can see, however, that my allocated speaking time has run out, so I shall stop at this point. I would, however, put a strong case to the Presidency and the Commissioner for our continuing to follow the guidelines which we have indicated in the report and to which I have referred in my speech. (Applause)

Political group: ELDR