European Union

General : Proposals to regulate private security firms, a blacklist of countries linked to money laundering and the opportunities and challenges of the sharing economy are just some of the topics covered by Parliament committees this week. In addition the House of European History will be officially launched this week, while the Parliament opens its door to the general public in Brussels.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

2186: according to the World Economic Forum, that’s the year we will achieve economic gender parity if progress continues at the current rate. It’s a hefty downward revision from last year’s prediction of 2133.

With these statistics, the estimate that seven out of ten women worldwide still suffer physical and/or sexual violence at some point in their lives and the rise of a world superpower ‘leader’ who has boasted of sexual assault and threatens to set back the clock on hard-won women’s rights, it is not so hyperbolic to suggest that we are on the verge of darkness.

But there are reasons for optimism; to #BeBoldForChange, to borrow the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day. Alongside the dismal shifts we have witnessed there are two immensely powerful trends — the digital megatrend and women’s empowerment — that, if leveraged together, promise to become the great game-changer of the 21st century.

ICT (information and communications technology) is a forceful catalyst for gender equality and women’s empowerment, as underscored by its inclusion in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through my work as Director of a crowdfunding platform for women’s empowerment, I witness the transformative power of ICT every day. Solar-powered, mobile information technology classes are carried to young women from cemetery-slums in the Philippines, enabling them to obtain safe employment in the ICT sector. Women from tribal zones in Pakistan benefit from computer-assisted entrepreneurship classes. In South Africa mobile health (m-health) services are reducing mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Indigenous women in Guatemala are changing their futures thanks to mobile microfinance. In Egypt online civic education campaigns and training are promoting women’s political participation. Using ingenious apps, women farmers in Tunisia are adapting to and even resisting the impact of climate change.

Here in our ostensibly liberated, high-income countries ICT is deployed daily to advance women’s rights and equality. Innovative apps and networks help prevent violence against women and support survivors. (In Europe violence against women costs societies an estimated €228bn per year, so such technologies have additional economic benefits.) Online campaigns combat stereotypes and advance gender equity in the media. Digital platforms enable crowdfunding for female (social) entrepreneurs. Campaigns and apps promote ‘gender-lens investing’, which takes account of empowerment and economic viability. Innovative software is automating screening of job applications and human resources processes, thereby reducing gender bias. Research shows that societies’ ‘digital fluency’ reduces workplace inequality, as well as offering women in particular the flexibility of teleworking.

“Decades of research prove that women’s empowerment is a key driver of wider socioeconomic progress”

Across the world digital technologies are helping women to enjoy their human rights and realise their potential, and this in turn has far-reaching benefits. Decades of research prove that women’s empowerment is a key driver of wider socioeconomic progress. It improves business financial performance and boosts a nation’s or region’s gross domestic product. The ‘Power of Parity’ report by consulting firm McKinsey estimates that narrowing the global gender gap in labour force participation could add US$12 trillion in global annual GDP by 2025. And narrowing the gap helps to address some of today’s toughest global problems, including poverty, food insecurity, and environmental sustainability. The stability of communities depends on empowered women, who are, at a time of spreading extremism, a powerful force for peace and global security.

It’s clear that women’s empowerment is central to wider socioeconomic progress, and crucial if we are to achieve the objectives of the European Union’s Europe 2020 growth strategy and the SDGs. And it’s clear that ICTs can catalyse progress for women.

But there is a roadblock. A digital gender divide that persists across the world – and one that is widening.

3.9 billion people – around half the world’s population – are still offline, and the majority of these are girls and women. Research estimates that women’s chances of benefiting from the advantages of ICT are one-third less than men’s. Across developing countries approximately 25% fewer women than men have internet access. In Africa only 12% of women are online.

Women in low- and middle-income countries face barriers of accessibility, affordability, inadequate digital education and a consequent lack of digital literacy skills, in addition to problems of cultural bias and mobility restraints. In higher-income countries, women remain chronically underrepresented in technology fields. Europe’s gap is stark: only 30% of the ICT sector is female. Women are particularly absent from advanced technical and decision-making positions, with a paucity of females opting for ICT studies and careers. There is an alarmingly leaky pipeline, with many women dropping out of ICT jobs and education. As governments try to correct the supply-demand mismatch in digital skills in the growing ICT sector, it’s estimated that the EU will suffer a shortfall of more than 750,000 digitally-skilled professionals by 2020.

Overcoming the digital gender divide is imperative: both morally, so that girls and women can reap equal dividends in our digital societies and economies; and for the economic, development and security reasons that are growing spectacularly more pressing each day.

“Governments must prioritise gender equality issues, integrate ICT policies with gender and development policies, and move beyond rhetorical commitments towards concrete actions”

The good news is that extensive studies have diagnosed the problems and we have an abundance of recommendations, roadmaps and action plans. These include the Gender Equality Action Plan by the International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency; the European Commission’s European Code of Best Practices for Women in ICT; and UN Women’s women and technology recommendations from the 60th session of its Commission on the Status of Women (CSW60). Meanwhile, savvy governments and businesses are implementing multi-stakeholder partnership initiatives — public, private and civil-sector — to advance women’s digital inclusion, digital skills and entrepreneurship, and to attract and retain more female talent in ICT sectors. Such moves address the digital skills deficit and open up huge, multi-billion-dollar market opportunities.

But much more needs to be done. We need greater investment in girls’ and women’s equal and affordable access to ICT, as well as girls’ digital skills education from an early age. Governments must further prioritise gender equality issues, integrate ICT policies with gender and development policies, and move beyond rhetorical commitments and towards concrete actions. More needs to be done to address cybercrime and protect women’s rights and safety online where, according to the WorldWide Web Foundation, “a culture of impunity reigns”. And we need better sex-disaggregated data and analytics to track progress. As the saying goes, ‘what gets measured, gets done’.

To change today’s digital picture we need greater political will. Governments, companies, educators, and civil society: we all need to invest more in girls’ and women’s digital empowerment. We must collaborate, and we can: our increasingly interconnected, digital age offers us unprecedented opportunities to take action. And everyone stands to benefit from increased gender equality in ICT.

Europe has everything to gain by being an exemplary global leader on this front. Capitalising on women’s vast talent to meet the demand for ICT skills could give an estimated annual €9bn boost to EU GDP by 2020. It’s our best means of ensuring productivity, growth, innovation and competitiveness, thereby reaping the wider socioeconomic benefits of women’s empowerment. ICT and innovations in ICT are shaping the world we live in and determining the values we live by. Women must be equal participants in this.

Online and elsewhere, debates continue about the Women’s March on 21 January 2017 and what its significance was, is and will be. One thing is certain: the Women’s March will go down in history as a landmark date, when countless women and men across the globe made their voices heard by calling for the protection of civil rights, and women’s rights in particular. But it’s worth remembering that this worldwide mobilisation began with ICT: a single Facebook post from a grandmother in a remote community on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

Our common future can be safer, brighter and fairer. The world urgently needs empowered women, and ICTs are one of the best tools for women’s empowerment.

IMAGE CREDIT: Pramote/Bigstock

The post Digital technologies can be a 21st-century game-changer for women appeared first on Europe’s World.

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The opening gap is considerable The EU and UK are a distance apart on core divorce questions. For all the goodwill, there is a clear clash on what citizen rights to guarantee (continued EU rights versus UK rights for non-EU migrants). The UK side disagree with the premise of an exit bill. There is a big gap on what a “phased approach” means. And there are more hidden, but perhaps more fundamental, differences over the ambition of a trade deal, and when it will come.

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It’s the first thing the French check out when they’re back from their summer holidays and ‘La Rentrée’ – that fateful moment when normal life resumes in early September – is looming again: on what day of the week will the national holidays fall in the forthcoming school year? 1st and 11th November (All Saints and the 1918 Armistice Day respectively) are only worth a quick look – the weather won’t be too enticing anyway. The days who really count are the ‘Bridges of May’ (‘Les ponts du mois de mai’): Labour Day on the 1st, and Victory Day on the 8th. If they fall on a Sunday, you’ll feel like you’re cheated on by some dark forces; but in a good year, when they fall on a, say, Tuesday or Thursday, everything is set for some lovely ‘ponts’, which consist of slipping just one paid vacation day between the weekend and the holiday and enjoying the pleasure of a prolonged spring break. Or two. Or three, actually, since Ascension Day (courtesy to the Catholic Church) is guaranteed to fall on a Thursday.

Some serious economists and exasperated business leaders have repeatedly suggested shutting down the entire country for the entire month of May. Which, true enough, would make things clearer for both international business partners and French HR departments. But France would no longer be itself without the Bridges of May – they will most likely end up on the UNESCO cultural heritage list.

Rarely has the ‘bridge’ metaphor been more fitting than in 2017. Both 1st and 8th May are indeed bridges, pathways from A to B, where the river to cross stands for the presidential election and ‘B’ stands for ‘Unknown Territory’. Whoever wins next Sunday, the Fifth Republic will no longer be the same, and the sudden awareness of the great uncertainty that lies ahead is dawning on the French since the 1st-round results flashed up on their TV screen.

The 1st of May 2017 is the bridge to an unprecedented campaign week, with Le Pen’s hate speech dictating the agenda and the news channels her hypnotised prey, shuddering with excitement at the slow converging of the poll curbs, as if they were witnessing a football cup final where the underdog pushes the favourite towards extra time (and we all know that in penalty shoot-outs, everything is possible, don’t we?).

The 8th of May 2017, rather than a day of relief that the campaign is finally over, is likely to be a day of collective breath-holding: ‘And now? What next?’ A one-day bridge that leads to the next campaign, just as tense as the previous one, and even more unpredictable. How many of the 577 constituencies will be shaken by a major upheaval, no one can tell.

Anti-FN demonstrations on 1st May 2002.

Fifteen years ago, things were so much clearer. The shock of seeing Jean-Marie Le Pen’s grandfatherly smile on the campaign poster for the second round was deep, but it occurred in a familiar setting, with perfectly predictable reactions – massive demonstrations all across the countries over the 1st-May bridge – and outcome: the election of Chirac, and a return in no time to party politics business as usual, as if nothing had happened.

For many French – especially those who had sanctioned Lionel Jospin in the first round because he had not been ‘left enough’ – there was even some kind of self-gratifying redemption in the opportunity to demonstrate against the Front National and defend democracy. Plantu even adapted the ‘bridges’ metaphor to the situation in one of his cartoons for Le Monde. In a rather naïve manner, it seems to me (unless there is some hidden, grave irony that is lost on me).

Plantu cartoon for Le Monde (May 2002)

Le pont d’Avignon

This year, no one knows where the bridge is leading to. A new frontier, full of opportunity? Or a rather scary place, where old landmarks provide no orientation anymore? Or nowhere at all, like the beautiful, but useless Pont d’Avignon? The legislative elections will be a passage to a very complicated summer, with shady majority-building manoeuvres and murky arrangements rather than light-hearted sunbathing. If the country is lucky, some kind of half-baked solution will have been found by the end of August, when ‘La rentrée’ is looming again. If not, the best possible quantum of solace will be the yearly calendar check: 1st and 8th May will be Tuesdays! And Ascension Day will be on Thursday 10th! Who needs a stable government over autumn and winter, when you have perspectives like this for next spring?

Albrecht Sonntag
@albrechtsonntag

This is post # 20 on the French 2017 election marathon.
All previous posts can be found here.

The post France 2017: The Bridges of May appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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EU Heads of State or Government meet in an EU 27 format (without the UK), to adopt the guidelines for the Brexit negotiations, on 29 April 2017 in Brussels.

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DRAFT REPORT containing a motion for a non-legislative resolution on the draft Council decision on the conclusion on behalf of the Union of the Partnership Agreement on Relations and Cooperation between the European Union and its Member States, of the one part, and New Zealand, of the other part
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Charles Tannock

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

DRAFT REPORT on EU political relations with Latin America
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Javi López

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

DRAFT RECOMMENDATION on the proposal for a Council decision on the conclusion of a Framework Agreement between the European Union and Kosovo on the general principles for the participation of Kosovo in Union programmes
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Ulrike Lunacek

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

DRAFT RECOMMENDATION on the draft Council decision on the conclusion on behalf of the Union of the Partnership Agreement on Relations and Cooperation between the European Union and its Member States, of the one part, and New Zealand, of the other part
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Charles Tannock

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

DRAFT REPORT on the 2016 Commission Report on Turkey
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Kati Piri

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

AMENDMENTS 1 - Draft recommendation on the draft Council decision on the conclusion, on behalf of the Union, of the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and its Member States, of the one part, and the Republic of Cuba, of the other part
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

OPINION on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the financial rules applicable to the general budget of the Union and amending Regulation (EC) No 2012/2002, Regulations (EU) No 1296/2013, (EU) 1301/2013, (EU) No 1303/2013, EU No 1304/2013, (EU) No 1305/2013, (EU) No 1306/2013, (EU) No 1307/2013, (EU) No 1308/2013, (EU) No 1309/2013, (EU) No 1316/2013, (EU) No 223/2014, (EU) No 283/2014, (EU) No 652/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council and Decision No 541/2014/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Andi Cristea

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Good afternoon,

First of all, I want to underline the outstanding unity of all the 27 leaders on the guidelines for our negotiations with the UK. They were adopted immediately after we started the summit, which bodes well for the negotiations. We now have unanimous support from all the 27 Member States and the EU institutions, giving us a strong political mandate for these negotiations. Here I would like to thank the whole team who worked hard to prepare the guidelines, especially Secretary-General Jeppe Tranholm-Mikkelsen, Piotr Serafin and Didier Seeuws.

We are united not only on the substance, but also on the method of conducting the Brexit talks. I am referring here to the so-called phased approach, accepted by the leaders today. This means that before negotiating our future relations with the UK, we must first achieve sufficient progress on citizens' rights, finances and the border issue in Ireland. It is too early to speculate on when this might happen. However, it is important to highlight that it will be for the EU leaders to assess, and decide, if sufficient progress has been made. And this will be a unanimous decision of all the 27 heads.

Let me now focus on our priority number one, namely citizens, whose rights we want to respect and secure in the first place. Today's discussion made clear that when it comes to reaching a decision on citizens' rights, not only speed is of the essence - but above all, quality, as so many people's lives depend on it. We are talking about four and a half million people: Europeans residing in the UK, and Britons living on the continent. Over the past weeks, we have repeatedly heard from our British friends - also during my visit in London - that they are ready to agree on this issue quickly. But I would like to state very clearly that we need real guarantees for our people to live, work and study in the UK, and the same goes for the British. The Commission has prepared a full list of rights and benefits that we want to guarantee for those affected by Brexit. In order to achieve sufficient progress, we need a serious British response. I want to assure you that as soon as the UK offers real guarantees for our citizens, we will find a solution rapidly.

Thank you.

Good morning. Let me just say three things.

First. We all want a close and strong future relationship with the UK. There's absolutely no question about it. But before discussing the future, we have to sort out our past. We will handle it with genuine care, but firmly. This is, I think, the only possible way to move forward.

We also need solid guarantees for all citizens and their families who will be affected by Brexit, on both sides. This must be the number one priority for the EU and the UK. And the Commission has already prepared a precise and detailed list of citizens' rights we want to protect.

And finally. We need to remain united as EU27. It is only then that we will be able to conclude the negotiations. Which means that our unity is also in the UK's interest. And as for now, I feel strong support from all the EU institutions, including the European Parliament, as well as all the 27 Member States. I know this is something unique, but I am confident that it will not change.

Thank you.

Andriciuc and Others
Approximation of laws
According to Advocate General Wahl, a term of a loan agreement that provides for the repayment of the loan in the foreign currency in which the loan was granted does not necessarily constitute an unfair term

Andriciuc and Others
Approximation of laws
According to Advocate General Wahl, a term of a loan agreement that provides for the repayment of the loan in the foreign currency in which the loan was granted does not necessarily constitute an unfair term