Cash to boost sex equality under threat

Date: 25/05/2000

By John Shelley

SOCIAL affairs chief Anna Diamantopoulou faces a fierce battle to persuade her fellow European Commissioners not to axe funding for a 20-year-old women's equality programme.

Diamantopoulou will next week ask her colleagues to approve a 50-million-euro budget for the scheme for the next five years. But although the relatively small annual 10-million-euro allocation is the same as for the previous five-year period, officials fear even this may be too much for Commissioners increasingly reluctant to fund sex equality projects. "They talk about how important it is to support women, but when it comes to money it becomes more difficult to get help," said one.

The proposal is contained in a 'gender equality' paper which also outlines plans for a new initiative to mainstream equal opportunities issues within the Commission.

Under this scheme, each directorate-general has been asked to identify areas where it can act to improve equality, and a cross-departmental group will be set up to monitor progress. Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner António Vitorino will, for example, be asked to try to redress the fact that 80% of asylum seekers are women but 80% of those granted asylum are men.

Officials are confident that the mainstreaming plan will be approved. "It will give all the Commissioners a chance to show how good they have been," said one. But the proposed funding for organisations promoting women's equality, an equality week each year and more statistical research into sex discrimination is far more controversial - and even if her plans are endorsed next week, Diamantopoulou will still have to convince EU governments of their worth.

Women's groups have, how-ever, welcomed her two-pronged approach to tackling the problem.

Social affairs chief Anna Diamantopoulou faces a fierce battle to persuade her fellow European Commissioners not to axe funding for a 20-year-old women's equality programme.