Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 30 May 2018 - Strasbourg

Gender equality and women's empowerment: transforming the lives of girls and women through EU external relations 2016-2020 (debate)

  Linda McAvan, Rapporteur. – Madam President, Commissioner Hahn said this is the beginning of the process. Indeed it is, and we suggested that this Parliament comes back to this in about two years’ time and looks again. Of course it’s not just the Commission that should be doing things – we should do things as well. When we go on missions, for example, we should ask the Commission for their gender analysis of the country, and we should be asking questions as well, and also in our work, taking this very seriously and showing our partners that we take it seriously.

It’s getting late, colleagues. I just want to thank everybody, thank Ms Šuica in particular for her work on this. I know there are some difficult issues where we disagree. When we have disagreed we have done so in a good spirit. I know there are some areas where some colleagues disagree on bits of this report. But please don’t use that as an excuse to reject it tomorrow. It’s got some very important elements in this report, and I hope that as many colleagues as possible will support it in the vote.