Mr President, this is the second time that social policy and policy on equal opportunities for men and women have been scheduled so late in the day. This is acceptable once in a while, but I should nevertheless like to ask those who draft the agenda to switch things around and to schedule economic policy and agricultural policy, for example, this late on the agenda, which would allow us to discuss our reports in the afternoon and prevent Mrs Diamantopoulou and us always having to sit here burning the midnight oil. I shall now turn to the report. Why has a report been drafted on the representation of women among the social partners? Firstly, because there has been an enormous increase in the number of working women. Women constitute 42% of the total workforce in the EU. This same increase is not reflected in the bodies that have a say in policy. These are the structural bodies of the social partners themselves, their chairmen, their secretaries-general, their executive committees, their general meetings, their negotiation committees, and so on. Women are underrepresented in these. Even where social partners function as delegates in advisory bodies, these delegates are very rarely women. Despite this, the social partners require – and we grant them this with pleasure – a large proportion of the power in Europe and the Member States, for it is, of course, a fact that the collective labour agreements they conclude, and which therefore also affect women, generally have force of law. Indeed, a large proportion of legislative authority, namely that related to labour, has been passed on to them. This is permissible, provided that the social partners are representative. If they are not, then this is not really tolerable. I maintain that they are not representative. When, while 42% of women are in the labour market, not even 25% of women are represented in the administrative bodies of the unions, a figure dropping below 12% or 10% in some administrative bodies, and if, for example, employers' organisations have 1% or 2% of women in their administrative bodies, then I maintain that these social partners are not representative of the labour market. Hence the report. We would therefore ask first and foremost that data be collated and that a database be set up that tracks the presence of women amongst the social partners, for it is extremely difficult, Commissioner, Mr President and fellow MEPs, to obtain these figures. This is not too bad for the trade unions since they themselves keep track of these figures to some extent, but this is practically impossible for employers. If you were to ask any Member State what the proportion of women is in employers' organisations, you would not get a reply, any figures or data. Either this is due to unwillingness, or the data is not available. It is therefore essential to set up a database. I know that the Commission is in the course of setting this up and that a research mandate has been issued. This mandate, however, runs over four years, and I hope, Commissioner, that it will not be four years before steps are taken. If we have to wait for the figures, it will be a long time before anything happens. In my view, the Commission, the Member States and the social partners must pursue a policy that is similar to that in the political world. Fortunately, political parties have gradually been convinced of the fact that the political bodies must be representative of the people in their country. If 50% of those people are women, as is the case in all countries – and it is often more – then the political world should be a representation of those women too. This is policy both in Europe and in the national Member States. The same cannot be said, unfortunately, of the social partners. This is why a series of measures is being proposed in this report which must be implemented either by the European Union or the social partners themselves, with a little pressure from the Member States, in order to achieve an acceptable level of representation of women in all negotiating bodies and in the bodies of the social partners, also with the aim of allowing women's issues to be discussed during the negotiations. It does indeed speak for itself that those who are around the negotiating table are most sensitive to their own issues; this is always the case. This is also normal, for they are most familiar with their own issues. This is similar to organising a negotiating table with disabled people; they too would be very sensitive to the issues affecting disabled people, and they would be right. This is also true of negotiating tables attended only by men. They are very sensitive to their own issues and not so sensitive to those of women. Hence our theory. I urge you, Commissioner, to adopt a policy that addresses this issue as a whole.

Political group: PPE-DE