Changes from report parliamentary committee draft to plenary report

Added78. Highlights with great concern the growth of the ‘manosphere’; underlines that algorithms used by social media platforms amplify extreme misogynistic content; urges the Commission to investigate and sanction VPLOs that do not fulfil their obligations to remove harmful content; urges the Commission to explore the growing divergence in attitudes between young men and women towards feminism and gender equality, to assess its societal consequences, particularly in online spaces, and to develop measures to address and counter the rise of misogynistic, far-right values among boys and young men concerning gender equality and women’s rights; calls therefore on the Commission to promote comprehensive, age appropriate sexuality and relationship education in schools, strengthen critical media literacy, counter gender misinformation and disinformation and address gender stereotypes; stresses the need for a deeper understanding of the incel phenomenon and ideology and emphasises the importance of prevention by more active policies to counter them and their narratives together with potential underlying mental health issues and security issues;

Added79. Recalls the crucial and indispensable role that civil society organisations (CSOs) play , in a system of checks and balances in a healthy democracy, especially women’s rights organisations and women human rights defenders including those working in the humanitarian sector, in defending and advancing gender equality, human rights, and fundamental freedoms, especially during times of political, social, and institutional backlash; calls on the Commission to recognise, protect, ensure the safety of, and support civil society organisations, women’s human rights organisations and defenders, feminist, LGBTIQ+ and sexual and reproductive rights movements which are essential in advocating for inclusive policy reforms, challenging discriminatory practices, and mobilising communities in the defence of fundamental rights in the EU and globally; notes that they are increasingly being targeted by far right and anti-right actors; calls on the Commission to include as a horizontal pillar in EU policies and in the post 2025 Gender Equality Strategy actions and recommendations on the safeguarding and support of civil society organisations working on women’s rights, gender equality and anti-discrimination;

Added80. Urges the Commission to ensure sustainable and accessible funding for women’s rights organisations, including through the new MFF and to maintain and strengthen its commitment to supporting civil society, including financially through the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (CERV), ensuring that it remains a robust tool for addressing emerging threats to rights and freedoms; calls in particular on the Commission to maintain CERV as a stand-alone programme under direct management and substantially increase its funding in order to respond to the needs of underfunded CSOs and to the increasing threats and challenges to civic space and EU values; urges the Commission to maintain the programmes dedicated strand to gender equality and women’s rights, including SRHR, as well as dedicated strands such as Daphne, which should remain an autonomous programme with a separate budget line in the new MFF to combat GBV and discrimination including against LGBTIQ people;

Added81. Warns that a significant portion of the funding driving the growth of anti-gender movements across the EU comes from foreign actors; reiterates that all funding must align with the common values of the Union as enshrined in Article 2 TEU and the Charter of Fundamental Rights, ensuring that financial support reinforces the democratic values of the EU; calls on the Commission to revise and audit all current funding, in a gender-responsive manner on a ‘do no harm’ principle in order to ensure that no EU funds go towards anti-democratic and anti-gender objectives and projects; urges the Commission to closely monitor the implementation in Member States of funds under shared management aimed at promoting gender equality and supporting civil society, including women non-governmental organisations, in order to ensure that calls for proposals to obtain such funds are not being deliberately paused or withheld;

Added82. Calls on the Commission to closely monitor the implementation by the Member States of judgments from both the European Court of Human Rights and the CJEU, with particular attention to those related to gender equality, non-discrimination and minority rights, ensuring full adherence to international obligations;

Cross-cutting means of achieving gender equality

Change 14

Removed18. Reiterates that all efforts to achieve progress in gender equality must be made with full respect of the principles of intersectionality and gender mainstreaming;

Added83. Reiterates that all efforts to achieve progress in gender equality must follow the principles of gender mainstreaming, ensuring that gender perspectives are integrated into all policies, actions and processes across all levels of governance, within the EU; calls on the Commission to recommit, to gender mainstreaming in all sectors, including in non-social sectors such as trade, energy, agriculture; calls on the Commission to mainstream gender equality in all EU migration and asylum policies with special focus on women, girls and LGBTIQ+ people, and to mitigate protection risks; calls on the Commission to continue to undertake a formal evaluation of the gender impact of EU financed programmes, including modalities such as budget support, and to report back to the European Parliament; stresses that this evaluation should be based on gender-disaggregated data and that its result should be integrated in future programming; reiterates the importance of financial resources for gender mainstreaming;

Change 15

Changed19.84. Calls on the Commission to ensure and further developstrengthen the application of gender mainstreaming in its structures, methods and tools, and to ensure that the gender perspective is integrated into all of the Commission’s proposals, including all budgetary procedures;

Change 16

Removed20. Urges the Commission to use and further develop intersectionality as a cross-cutting principle in the new Gender Equality Strategy;

Added85. Calls on the Commission to support the setting up of a gender-equality policy expert group to support the existing Commission task force on addressing the specific challenges that impact women’s quality of life and participation in society, foster collaboration and exchange of best practices, drive the women’s health, social, research and education agenda across the EU and meet the EU Treaty’s goal to eliminate inequalities and promote equality;

Added86. Calls on the Commission to ensure, in the framework of the next MFF, a gender-budgeting approach across all pillars, funding instruments and budget lines and to ensure that they all actively contribute to gender equality goals at all stages; urges the Commission to further develop the current ‘tracking-only’ stage into fully fledged gender budgeting, embedding the gender equality perspective across the entire budget cycle, from planning and allocation to monitoring of financial resources, especially to address gaps in terms of collecting gender-disaggregated data and to clarify scoring criteria, including implementing a score category to capture budgetary interventions with a negative impact on gender equality, as this is currently lacking, and to ensure that it is done in time for the upcoming MFF 2028-2034; stresses that this requires setting clear priorities, commitments and indicators on gender equality via a targeted approach, as well as setting concrete criteria to measure progress;

Added87. Calls for adequate funding for EU research on gender equality, including for the EIGE and the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, and through tools such as projects of the gender equality plans funded by Horizon Europe; calls for an improved methodology that should identify not only the beneficiaries of EU funds, but also the transformative potential of the programmes; urges the Commission to ensure that EU funds are only granted to projects that comply with the fundamental rights and principles of the EU, including gender equality, access to SRHR and the elimination of GBV; urges the Commission to ensure a just and socially fair transition that works for all by developing a gender-transformative intersectional strategy to address key issues and stresses the need to boost investment in essential social services significantly with a view to contributing to the independence, equality and emancipation of women;

Added88. Acknowledges that many women face intersecting inequalities and discrimination in the EU and urges the Commission to further develop the application of intersectionality as a cross-cutting principle in the new post-2025 Gender Equality Strategy and within all legislative and non-legislative measures;

Added89. Urges the Commission and the Member States to address intersectionality in all policies related to gender equality, acknowledging that GBV and discrimination are also compounded by factors such as age, race, ethnicity, minority or migration status, disability, gender identity and sexual orientation, and that the intersection of these factors creates multiple and unique forms of discrimination that require targeted, context-specific measures;

Added90. Calls on the Commission to explicitly include trans people, especially trans women and girls, in all gender equality measures, to standardise access to legal gender recognition, and to develop specific actions against transphobia, especially in healthcare, employment and education;

Added91. Calls on the Commission to ensure that measures cover all EU territory and that they provide effective instruments to address regional disparities in gender equality both between and within EU Member States and their regions; stresses that these measures should be adaptable and adequately resourced to tackle gender disparities, taking into account the available resources, accessibility and level of progress of each region;

Added92. Regrets that despite the vital role women in rural areas play in maintaining their communities and keeping agriculture viable, their contribution is often unacknowledged and they continue to face numerous challenges, including limited employment opportunities, poorer access to services, less developed infrastructure and under-representation in decision-making; calls on the Commission to create and implement sub-programmes and activities dedicated to women in rural areas;

AddedInstitutional environment for achieving gender equality

Added93. Calls on the Commission to continue to ensure annual publication of reports on the implementation of the post-2025 Gender Equality Strategy and to present them to the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) in order to enable Parliament to contribute to the strategy’s scrutiny and oversight;

Added94. Calls on the Commission to enhance and support the Council configuration on gender equality gathering ministers and secretaries of state in charge of gender equality, dedicated to the questions of women’s rights and gender equality to deliver common and concrete measures including through the Council presidencies, and to ensure that gender-equality issues are discussed at the highest political level;

Added95. Urges the Commission to monitor and encourage swift implementation of the Directive on standards for equality bodies (Directive 2024/1499) and to put forward a recommendation to Member States regarding standards for their functioning and tasks in order to facilitate the correct transposition of the directive and ensure harmonisation of the set-up of equality bodies across the Union; stresses the importance of the EU’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights and calls on the Commission to take action towards achieving this goal by requesting the CJEU’s legal opinion;

Added96. Praises the EIGE’s constructive cooperation and its dedicated work, which plays a crucial role in adequate data collection, analysis of comparable disaggregated data, providing research and guidance to EU institutions and Member States, as well as monitoring the implementation of gender-relevant EU legislation across all the EU Member States; calls on the Commission to ensure that the EIGE has sufficient financial and human resources and capacity to be able to effectively perform its tasks; recalls that the EIGE has experienced persistent issues with understaffing, which were further aggravated by the sharp increase in requests for technical assistance; calls therefore for the EIGE to be allocated new temporary agents;

Added97. Calls on the Commission to actively consult and involve women and girls in all their diversity, including through representative organisations, in the preparation and implementation of the post 2025 Gender Equality Strategy;

Added98. Calls on the Commission to recognise the important role that CSOs and actors on different levels, such as rural communities, local action groups, local and regional municipalities, as well as academia and institutions such as the Committee of the Regions, play in realising gender equality; calls, therefore, on the Commission to follow an inclusive approach and closely involve all these stakeholders in helping achieve the goals of the post-2025 Gender Equality Strategy;

Added99. Emphasises the importance of cooperating with experts in the field; calls on the Commission to also ensure that gender equality policies are properly funded and are supported at local and regional levels and that the EU’s cohesion and recovery funds include requirements for clear gender equality objectives, to ensure that regional development contributes to reducing gender disparities rather than exacerbating inequalities, as they have a direct influence on a range of areas affecting gender equality, such as employment, education, care infrastructure, health, support for women who are victims of violence, and gender-sensitive urban planning and transport;

Added100. Calls on the Commission to ensure and improve – in cooperation with the EIGE and Eurostat – regular, reliable and adequate collection, reporting and analysis of comparable gender-disaggregated data at the EU and the Member State levels; calls on the Commission to develop a common tracking methodology for collecting data, where not available, and underlines the need for the development of horizontal EU definitions, to facilitate gender impact assessments in Union policy areas; calls on the Commission to improve, in particular, data collection on the prevention, prosecution and sanctioning of GBV, including femicide, rape and other sexual violence through recording comprehensive and comparable data on both victims and perpetrators disaggregated by sex, age group, relationship between the victim and the offender and type of offence as listed in the directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence and, where possible gender, gender identity, racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, sex characteristics, disability and citizenship status, and to ensure that the data is reviewed regularly and used to inform policymaking, resource allocation and other measures aimed at preventing and addressing sexual and other GBV; encourages the cooperation of the Member States with civil society in ensuring victims’ rights and in designing specific policies;

Added101. Emphasises that the precondition for developing policies on gender equality is allocating adequate resources and implementing the post-2025 Gender Equality Strategy;

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102. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and the Commission.