Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Mrs Karamanou’s report places emphasis on a very important issue: equality between men and women is extremely precarious. All the figures consistently demonstrate this and we are making slow progress. That is why, in my view, we have to keep emphasising the issue of decision making and what Europe can do. Europe has played a leading role in the struggle for equality of treatment, on the one hand, and equality in decision making, on the other. This has been largely inadequate, however, bearing in mind the contents of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, where decision making on policy is taken into account only with regard to European Parliament or local elections. I would just like to tell you about the French situation, where we have a law which is currently being implemented for local elections. In the battles we are waging we discover that every day in the French press there are truly fascinating articles and debates about the way that the real situation is being transformed, for, Mrs Karamanou, alongside Greece, France is the most backward country in Europe in this regard. Today, with the game of musical chairs that is being played by the government, women make up 8% of the national parliament. That is less than 10%, and that means that the French situation is significant. The debate we are having today in this Chamber is one that has been going on continuously for two or three years in France. I have just one argument in defence of equality, not just political equality but equality in general. This argument, which is both political and philosophical, is this: there is no equality without restrictions, and I challenge the Group of the European People’s Party to prove otherwise. Let us not talk of positive discrimination quotas or anything else. There can be no production in our society without restrictions in order to ensure equality. This is the only comment I wanted to make. It was our final argument in the battle for equality. That is why I want to add very quickly, by way of conclusion, that there is nevertheless something important which must be clarified in today’s debate about decision making, which does not cover the whole problem regarding sexual equality, and that is the difference between political and economic matters. We now know what we have to do in the political arena, and I believe we are making progress. Certainly, I am gaining a great deal from the current experience in France. As regards economic equality in general, and decision making in particular, however, the problem is much more serious and much more extensive. As my fellow member in the Group of the Europe Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party has just mentioned, what happens within trades unions and in professional elections has as yet hardly been formulated. We have to work on this. It is a much more complex issue. I believe that in future we must no longer talk about political equality without finding the appropriate mechanisms. These will not be the same mechanisms in terms of constraints as those used in the political arena. The means of guaranteeing better representation of women both in industry and at a professional level must be found.

Political group: GUE-NGL