The European Parliament,

–   having regard to Articles 2, 3(2) and 141(4) of the EC Treaty,

–   having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 1260/1999 of 21 June 1999 laying down general provisions on the Structural Funds(1),

–   having regard to Regulation (EC) No 1784/1999 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 1999 on the European Social Fund(2),

–   having regard to Regulation (EC) No 1783/1999 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 1999 on the European Regional Development Fund(3),

–   having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 1257/1999 of 17 May 1999 on support for rural development from the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF) and amending and repealing certain Regulations(4),

–   having regard to the Council Resolution of 2 December 1996 on incorporating equal opportunities for men and women into the European Structural Funds(5),

–   having regard to European Commission Technical Paper No 3 entitled "Mainstreaming equal opportunities for women and men in Structural Fund programmes and projects" of March 2000,

–   having regard to Council Decision No 2001/51/EC of 20 December 2000 establishing a Programme relating to the Community framework strategy on gender equality (2001&nbhy;2005)(6),

–   having regard to the Presidency conclusions of the Lisbon European Council of 23 and 24 March 2000,

–   having regard to the Presidency conclusions of the Stockholm European Council of 23 and 24 March 2001,

–   having regard to the Presidency conclusions of the Barcelona European Council of 15 and 16 March 2002,

–   having regard to its resolution of 25 April 2002 on the Report from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions on equal opportunities for men and women in the European Union - 2000(7),

–   having regard to its resolution of 13 June 2002 on the 12th annual Commission report on the Structural Funds (2000), the annual Commission report on the Cohesion Fund (2000) and the annual Commission report on the instrument for structural policy for pre&nbhy;accession (ISPA) (2000)(8),

–   having regard to the Third European Seminar on "Equal opportunities for women and men in the Structural Funds", held in Santander (Spain) on 14 and 15 June 2002,

–   having regard to the Commission communication to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions entitled "Implementation of gender mainstreaming in the Structural Funds programming documents 2000-2006" (COM(2002) 748),

–   having regard to Rule 163 of its Rules of Procedure,

–   having regard to the report by the Committee on Women's Rights and Equal Opportunities (A5&nbhy;0059/2003),

A.   whereas the gender equality requirements laid down in the EC Treaty, which provide both for the incorporation of equal opportunities objectives into all Community measures and programmes under a horizontal approach and for the adoption of specific measures in favour of women, were transposed into the new Structural Funds regulations for the period 2000-2006 at the time the Structural Funds were reformed,

B.   whereas Regulation (EC) No 1260/1999 laying down the general provisions on the Structural Funds, which applies to programmes covered by any of these funds, makes equal opportunities for men and women a key objective of Structural Fund measures by incorporating equal opportunities objectives into operations co-financed by the Funds,

C.   whereas the incorporation of equal opportunities objectives into the Structural Funds implies automatically taking the differences between the situation of women and men into account at the various programming, implementation, monitoring and evaluation stages of all the measures and operations co-financed by the Structural Funds, as well as taking into account the impact of these measures and operations on the respective situations of women and men,

D.   whereas, despite a relative improvement in the programming for the period 2000-2006 in comparison to the preceding programming period (1994-1999), the implementation of equal opportunities in operations co-financed by the Structural Funds is far from satisfactory, and whereas most programming documents concerning the European Social Fund (ESF) provide for a dual approach in which the horizontal mainstreaming of equal opportunities can be combined with specific measures in favour of women,

1.  Notes that, as in the preceding programming period, the ESF continues to play a more prominent role than the other Funds vis-à-vis the equal opportunities objective, in that the majority of ESF programmes target the field of employment and human resources; regrets that in other important areas such as infrastructure, transport, the environment, local, rurual and urban development, fisheries, enterprise policy, the information society, research and technological development, further development and education, etc., the programmes only touch on the issue of equal opportunities; calls on the Commission, therefore, to develop specific guidelines on "equal opportunities" in all these areas by the end of 2003;

2.  Notes that measures under the ESF, in particular, tend to focus on enhancing women's participation in the labour market, education, and vocational training, and that little attention is awarded to reducing the horizontal and vertical segregation of the labour market, to pay inequalities, or to promoting the role of women in the fields of information and communication technologies, entrepreneurship, new employment opportunities and the decision-making process; requests the Commission, therefore, to take more specific measures to remedy these shortcomings;

3.  Takes note of the undertaking entered into by the Member States to include the objective of the horizontal incorporation of equal opportunities objectives into the Community Support Frameworks (CSFs) and into Single Programming Documents (SPDs), but regrets that this undertaking has been poorly implemented in the programme complements in terms of the concrete measures taken; calls on the Commission, therefore, to take the appropriate steps to improve the situation in this case, in the approval procedures of the underlying CSFs and SPDs;

4.  Regrets, therefore, that the majority of Structural Funds programmes do not include an analysis of economic and social inequalities between women and men or an estimation of the expected impact of the measures on men and women; stresses that even when such an analysis is included, the strategy to be pursued and the measures to be implemented, on the basis of precise or quantified objectives, with a view to reducing inequalities, do not always conform to the analysis; this state of affairs demonstrates a genuine lack of political commitment on the part of the Member States vis-à-vis the objective of promoting equal opportunities in the context of the Structural Funds;

5.  Takes note of the progress made in the field of the development of gender-specific statistics, but emphasises that greater efforts should be devoted to this, as statistics are a necessary tool for establishing monitoring indicators; draws the attention of the authorities responsible for programming to the need to develop statistics, both at national level and at regional and local level, in order to better illustrate the respective situation of women and men, and to ensure that these statistics cover all aspects of equal opportunities in each programme and that they are available to programme managers at every level; emphasises that statistics are also a key factor in establishing the proportion of women and men in each socio-economic bracket;

6.  Notes with concern that no progress has been made in relation to the preceding programming period with regard to the establishment of monitoring indicators; emphasises that the introduction and systematic use of gender-specific qualitative and quantitative indicators are crucial to the monitoring and evaluation of programmes with an eye to assessing the effectiveness of Structural Funds measures in terms of the equal opportunities objective, and particularly with a view to the 2003 mid-term evaluation, the potential revision of the measures and the allocation of the performance reserve;

7.  Invites the Member States to endeavour to ensure:

8.  Invites the Member States to make full use of existing opportunities in the programming of the various types of Structural Funds measures with a view to promote the mainstreaming of equal opportunities and to support specific equal opportunities policies or measures; asks the authorities responsible for managing the programmes to endeavour to ensure that adequate funds are available for this; asks the Commission to support technical assistance measures in all areas concerning development of the mainstreaming of equal opportunities, during the preparation and the implementation of programmes; also asks the Commission to take steps to disseminate and develop good practices, which are very useful tools for improving, in particular, monitoring and evaluation;

9.  Invites the Member States to include a financing plan in Structural Fund plans and programmes, setting out the appropriations available for individual measures and programmes to improve equal opportunities, so that an assessment of the effectiveness of each of the measures can be made;

10.  Invites the Member States to promote more extensive use of the Structural Funds for the purpose of making it easier to combine work and family life, not least by developing childcare facilities and facilities for other dependent persons such as the elderly, sick or disabled, and by promoting the reorganisation of working time and arrangements for returning to work after long absences; stresses that the Structural Funds should be used to raise awareness of the need for an equal division of tasks between women and men in families; emphasises the need to develop measures targeting employers with a view to reorganising working time for men as well as women;

11.  Draws the attention of the managing authorities to the importance of establishing relevant equal opportunities criteria for the selection of projects, in order to ensure that measures cofinanced by the Structural Funds contribute to the pursuit of the equal opportunities objective; asks these authorities to penalise projects which fail to satisfy the requirement of mainstreaming equal opportunities by rejecting project proposals or returning them to applicants for revision before any financing can be considered;

12.  Invites the Commission and the Member States to ensure that the 2003 mid-term evaluation establishes not only the extent to which the objective of mainstreaming equal opportunities has been taken into account in the Structural Funds measures, but also the extent to which this objective has been achieved, which financial resources are allocated to specific equal opportunities measures and whether resources have been put to appropriate use; on the basis of this evaluation, to make any necessary amendments to the programming of the measures for the remainder of the programming period so as to achieve the objective of incorporating equal opportunities, and to implement those amendments;

13.  Calls on the Member States to do everything possible to provide the population groups concerned and the bodies responsible for equal opportunities issues with information on the structural funds regulation and the possibilities for financing equality initiatives and to encourage them to put forward project proposals;

14.  Emphasises the particularly important role that the Structural Funds can play in combating the adverse effects that economic and social restructuring has on women in many of the candidate countries, particularly from the point of view of rising unemployment and the decrease in childcare facilities, which would enable work and family life to be combined; asks the governments of the candidate countries and the Commission to ensure that adequate financial support is provided to the NGOs concerned with equal opportunities and that they are involved at every stage of the programming and implementation of measures; calls for specific measures for women in the candidate Member States, who have specific problems staying in or re-entering into employment, having received most, if not all, of their education and vocational training under the "old" economic/ political system;

15.  Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the governments of the Member States and the candidate countries.

(1) OJ L 161, 26.6.1999, p. 1. (2) OJ L 213, 13.8.1999, p. 5. (3) OJ L 213, 13.8.1999, p. 1. (4) OJ L 160, 26.6.1999, p. 80. (5) OJ C 386, 20.12.1996, p. 1. (6) OJ L 17, 19.1.2001, p. 22. (7) P5_TA(2002)0206. (8) P5_TA(2002)0320.