Gender budgeting

16.3.2020

Question for written answer E-001640/2020
to the Commission
Rule 138
Josianne Cutajar (S&D)

Gender budgeting represents one of the tools aiming to promote gender equality and to assess the impact of the budgetary choices made by governments and public authorities.

In fact, it is unlikely that budgetary choices are neutral as they affect all demographic groups differently. Public investment or public budget cuts can make a difference when it comes to bridging or increasing the gender gap. Acknowledging the importance of this issue, Parliament approved a resolution in 2018, while the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) published its report ‘Gender budgeting. Mainstreaming gender into the EU budget and macroeconomic policy framework’, and made several recommendations. On 5 March 2020, the Commission published its communication entitled ‘A Union of Equality: on the Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025’.

Against this backdrop:

• 1.Can the Commission specify if it intends to follow the recommendations made by the EIGE in its report, including the integration of gender budgeting into the European Semester and the enhancement of gender mainstreaming in the European Structural and Investment Funds?
• 2.Does it deem that the current amount of sex-disaggregated data collected at national and EU level is sufficient to enable gender budgeting?