BRAINSTORMING SESSION ON THE CONFERENCE ON THE FUTURE OF EUROPE (COFoE)

On April 26, 2021, G5+ held a brainstorming session with experts and its honorary committee on the COFoE due to be launched on May 9th in Strasbourg.

Following the adoption of the joint declaration on March 4th, the first meeting of the Executive committee, and the launch of the multimedia platform, it was felt useful to have a first exchange on an exercise which claims to be conceived to "listen to citizens"

Some of the main points made were:

- The composition of the main instances of the Conference does not follow the request for gender balance made by the European Parliament. Once more, women are the exception as claimed by Iratxe Garcia Perez.

- The conference through the multimedia platform offers an opportunity to get people and in particular women's voices for a greener, healthier, fairer Europe, heard, hence the importance of posting requests, recommendations, ideas for the future and events concerning gender equality and EU policies (so far 2/3 of the 2000 contributors are men from mainly 3 countries....and this should change).

- As revealed in particular by the research project EUGENDEM, the polarisation around the issue of gender in the European Parliament -but also in the Council where it blocks the full recognition of the Istanbul Convention- bears the risk of delegitimising gender equality as a foundational principle of the EU and thereby threatening a strong pillar of democracy in Europe.

- Beyond the claims to make EU gender equality provisions stronger and more effective, the pandemic has highlighted the need to create coalitions for a healthier, fairer, and greener Europe on which feminists are at the forefront and to have more balanced leadership at the helm.

Its TIME TO ACT by speaking loud and clear in all the available agora

G5+ will organise a public webinar on Gender equality claims for the conference and strategic thinking in the second part of June.