Mediaboss Marketing

SPECIAL REPORT /The European Union is at a turning policy point: it must choose to lead the way towards a gender equal and sustainable future. Investing in womens rights and empowerment is the core commitment for a more sustainable, democratic and inclusive world to evolve, said Joanna Maycock in an interview with EurActiv.

Joanna Maycock is Secretary General of the European Women's Lobby.

She spoke to EurActiv's Editor-in-Chief, Daniela Vincenti

In 60 years a lot has been done on gender equality, but we are not close to parity yet. What are priorities to accelerate equality in 2015?

2015 is a very exciting time for gender equality and womens rights, and for the womens movement globally, and in Europe. Twenty years after the Beijing Platform for Action, a fundamental human rights instrument for women and girls was adopted in 1995, the European Womens Lobby (EWL) has produced its assessment of the continuing discrimination of women and girls in Europe, as witnessed by EWLs 3000 member organisations.

Our report From Words to Action gives the opportunity to learn from twenty years of campaigning. Much has been achieved, but much remains to be done. Despite the fact that equality between women and men is a core value of the EU, our report shows that women and girls still face inequality, violence, discrimination and insecurity. Women and girls cant wait 20 more years to enjoy their full human rights.

Many of your readers probably think that equality between women and men has already been achieved in Europe or at the very least is well on its way. The reality is that women still face persisting and serious discrimination: Women are much more likely to be unemployed or to live in poverty due to low paid precarious jobs. The average pay gap in Europe is still 16%, with women having 40% less pension than men. 30% of women in Europe have experienced male violence. Just 19% of Board members of listed companies are women and only 27% of members of parliament. That means that 73% of members of parliament are men. Women continue to experience sexism, sexual harassment and astonishing levels of stereotyping which hinder their personal, professional and political lives in multiple ways.

The European Union, is at a turning policy point: it must choose to lead the way towards a gender equal and sustainable future. Investing in womens rights and empowerment is the core commitment for a more sustainable, democratic and inclusive world to evolve.

Womens rights are facing a stronger backlash than ever. Ultra-conservative and religious groups are systematically calling gender equality into question, by attacking womens sexual and reproductive rights, sexuality education, womens access to employment and decision-making.

At the same time, a new generation of young feminists is mobilising widely, dynamically tackling new and old forms of violations of their rights. They are angry and completely fed up with this systemic inequality. Feminist economists are challenging the unsustainable and unjust economic system we live in, by proposing new ways of measuring wellbeing and protecting our planet and the next generations.

View post:
Activist: EU must dismantle the 'Pink Ghetto'

The collapse of European Union.
Start of the collapse of EU. Greece and United Kingdom are harbingers. Link to the Russian version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCiTCvYDwmc.

By:

Read the rest here:
The collapse of European Union. - Video

THE EUROPEAN UNION has agreed to allocate 40 million Euro (US$44.8 million) to finance Energy Efficiency and Biodiversity projects in Caribbean Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs).

This was one on the decisions coming out of the 13th Annual OCT-EU Regional Conference held in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) on Thursday. In addition the EU provides a total of 95 million Euro (US$107M) to the nine Caribbean OCTs as territorial allocations.

The conference was attended by the new European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development, Neven Mimica, on his first visit to the Caribbean three months after he took office. The new EU Development Commissionerstated: I am committed to ensuring that the EU upholds its role as a global champion of sustainable development, on the basis of partnership based on mutual interests.

He furtherhighlighted 2015 as the European Year for Development.

The 130 participants held in-depth dialogue on topics of mutual interest such as a more effective integration of the territories in their respective regions and on sustainable use of natural resources. The trilateral meetings proved to be very useful to facilitate the exchange of views on the programming process and a deeper partnership.

They underlined their special relationship, their belonging to the same European family and common objectives, values and principles. The partners agreed that innovation, competitiveness and blue and green growth are key factors in the sustainable development of the OCTs and the diversification of their economies.

Following the Ministerial Conference, the 13th Overseas Countries and Territories-EU Forum was opened on Friday by Premier of the British Virgin Islands, Dr Orlando Smith and Commissioner Mimica.

Those attending the Forum include Premiers and Chief Ministers of the 25 Overseas Countries and Territories; representatives of Denmark, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom; the EU Outermost regions and Members of the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Investment Bank.

OCTs are countries that depend constitutionally on four of the EU Member States Denmark, France, The Netherlands and The United Kingdom. They do not form part of EU territory, are not subject to EU law, but they benefit from associate status conferred on them by the Treaty of Lisbon. (PR)

Original post:
European Union makes large donation to Caribbean OCTs

BRUSSELS: The European Union may be a step closer to approving a shared airline passenger record, to detect travellers joining or returning from war in Syria and Iraq.

A new proposal has been put to the European parliament in Brussels but the issue remains controversial with privacy advocates, worried about anti-terror measures going too far.

Europes security services are on the lookout to prevent terror attacks like at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris and the shootings at a Jewish Museum in Brussels last year both carried out by young Europeans who returned from fighting with extremists in Syria and Iraq.

One prevention tool under debate is an air passenger name record (PNR) that allows intelligence services across Europe access to personal data like methods of payment and addresses.

A data sharing accord already exists between the United States and the EU, but the EU lawmaker championing the proposal says Europe has to step up surveillance of its own, generally open borders.

"We need now to make sure we have enough information to look at patterns of behaviour, said Timothy Kirkhope, a British member of the European Parliament. That is the basis on which we can find criminals and find terrorists in order to protect our citizens. Stop things happening such as the atrocities in Paris recently."

EU governments have yet to approve a so-called PNR system but support from the European Parliament is already divided. This proposal is nothing new - lawmakers at the European Parliament rejected it back in 2013 on the grounds that increased surveillance of airline passengers breached citizen privacy rights.

"We need to deliver whatever is necessary and proportionate to get a higher level of security. But what you are proposing now, the proposal of blanket mass surveillance of citizens, is exactly the opposite of that. It's not delivering that, said Jan Albrecht, a German member of the European Parliament.

Already before the Paris attacks, it was possible to know who is on which plane. We already know it. We have the advanced passenger information. It's there, we can access it, we know who's on the plane. So with regards to known suspects, we can follow them - so why dont we focus on the suspects?"

Opposition to data gathering has been particularly acute in countries like Germany, outraged over revelations of mass surveillance by US intelligence services after 9/11 attacks.

Read this article:
EU passenger record sharing proposal sparks privacy debate

The first round of the battle for the euro is over, and Germany has won. The whole European Union won, really, but the Germans set the strategy.

Technically everybody just kicked the can down the road four months by extending the existing bailout arrangements for Greece, but what was really revealed in the past week is that the Greeks cant win. Not now, not later.

The left-wing Syriza Party stormed to power in Greece last month promising to ditch the austerity that has plunge a third of the population below the poverty line and to renegotiate the countrys massive $270 billion bail-out with the EU and the International Monetary Fund. Exhausted Greek voters just wanted an end to six years of pain and privation, and Syriza offered them hope. But it has been in retreat ever since.

In the election campaign, Syriza promised 300,000 new jobs and a big boost in the monthly minimum wage (from $658 to $853). After last weeks talks with the EU and the IMF, all thats left is a promise to expand an existing program that provides temporary work for the unemployed, and an ambition to raise the minimum wage over time.

Its promise to provide free electricity and subsidized food for families without incomes remains in place, but Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras government has promised the EU and the IMF that its fight against the humanitarian crisis (will have) no negative fiscal effect. In other words, it wont spend extra money on these projects unless it makes equal cuts somewhere else.

Above all, its promise not to extend the bail-out program had to be dropped. Instead, it got a four-month bridging loan that came with effectively the same harsh restrictions on Greek government spending (although Syriza was allowed to rewrite them in its own words). And that loan will expire at the end of June, just before Greece has to redeem $7 billion in bonds.

So there will be four months of attritional warfare and then another crisis which Greece will once again lose. It will lose partly because it hasnt actually got a very good case for special treatment, and partly because the European Union doesnt really believe it will pull out of the euro common currency.

Greeces debt burden is staggering about $30,000 per capita. It can never be repaid, and some of it will eventually have to be canceled or rescheduled into the indefinite future. But not now, when other euro members like Spain, Portugal and Ireland are struggling with some success to pay down their heavy but smaller debts. If Greece got such a sweet deal, everybody else would demand debt relief too.

The cause of the debt was the same in every case: the euro was a stable, low-interest currency that banks were happy to lend in, even to relatively low-income European countries that were in the midst of clearly unsustainable, debt-fuelled booms. So all the southern European EU members (and Ireland) piled in but nobody else did it on the same scale as the Greeks.

The boom lasted for the best part of a decade after the euro currency launched in 1999. Ordinary Greeks happily bought imported German cars, French wines, Italian luxury goods and much else, while the rich and politically well connected raked off far larger sums and paid as little tax as possible. Greek governments ended up lying about the size of the countrys debts.

See original here:
Greece loses, European Union wins