On discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2024, Section III – Commission

The Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality calls on the Committee on Budgetary Control, as the committee responsible, to incorporate the following into its motion for a resolution:

A.whereas gender equality is a founding value of the Union enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union; whereas the Union is committed to promoting equality in all activities under Article 8 TFEU, establishing gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting in all policies; whereas budgets are not gender neutral and must be drawn up and discharged with the objective of gender equality; whereas the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union not only enshrines gender equality but also protects human dignity and prohibits all forms of discrimination, including those based on sexual orientation and gender (identity);

B.whereas Parliament has repeatedly called on the Commission to promote and implement gender mainstreaming, including gender budgeting, across all Union policies; whereas gender budgeting must integrate an intersectional perspective;

C.whereas the EU has significantly increased allocations for militarisation, including arms, infrastructure, security research, military mobility, border surveillance and externalisation; whereas these shifts risk diverting resources away from gender equality, social cohesion and the fight against gender-based violence;

D.whereas Gender Equality Index 2025 score for the EU is 63.4, with a 10.5-point increase since 2010; whereas achieving gender equality in the EU remains at least another 50 years away; whereas gender equality in the Union has been negatively impacted by growing anti-gender movements, sexism and strong prejudiced trends against women and the backlashes against gender equality, especially around sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in several Member States, whereas gender equality is further impacted by the wars, ongoing climate, energy, social crises and cost of living crisis which affect women disproportionately;

E. Whereas one in three women experience violence; whereas globally 140 women and girls die at the hands of a partner or relative every day; whereas on 7 May 2024, the Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence was adopted and entered into force on 14 June 2024; whereas intolerance towards LGBTIQ+ people, specifically trans people, has tragically increased sharply compared to 2019; whereas violence and hate-motived crimes against LGBTIQ+ people have increased compared to 2019; with the sharpest increase in attacks on trans women and men; whereas the Daphne Programme, aimed at protecting victims of violence, including women and children, represents a crucial EU instrument to combat gender-based violence and uphold fundamental rights, and its continued funding and support should be ensured within the Union’s budgetary and policy framework;

F. Whereas investing in gender equality strengthens economic growth, resilience and social cohesion across the EU; whereas a dynamic and competitive economy requires gender equality, entrepreneurship and innovation; whereas also economic policy requires gender mainstreaming ensuring that the European economy works for all women; whereas supporting women to start and run their own businesses contributes to economic diversification and reduces gender gaps in access to entrepreneurship and leadership;

1.Stresses that a gender equality perspective should be integrated and ensured into all policy areas particularly in light of the multiple gendered impacts of various ongoing climate, energy, social crises, wars and cost of living crisis with a focus on SRHR and the backlash against gender equality and women’s rights in the EU; reiterates therefore its call for the implementation of gender budgeting at all relevant and appropriate stages of the budgetary process; calls on the Commission to improve mainstreaming gender from the start of programme design and to set an horizonal gender equality provision with general equality objective;

2.Acknowledges the Union’s commitment to gender mainstreaming and improving the methodology for tracking gender expenditure; regrets that the Commission’s current methodology does not reflect potential negative consequences and results in uncertainty in 20% of cases regarding gender impact; urges the Commission to improve its assessment tools to ensure clearer outcomes and to track potential negative impacts; considers that the tracking methodology could be complemented with mandatory minimum criteria such as gender impacts assessments that should be linked to the tracking systems;

3.Welcomes the update of the better regulation guidelines and toolbox; regrets the lack of progress in conducting gender analyses of needs and impacts for EU funding programmes; calls on the Commission to use competitive impact assessments, including gender-sensitive analyses, when designing and implementing EU programmes and funding instruments, to ensure effective and equitable policy outcomes; and calls on the Commission to execute such analyses consistently ; calls on the Commission to fully integrate gender mainstreaming into the next MFF in order to include the gender perspective into all policy areas and budgets and alleviation measures, and where relevant gender budgeting with the objective to advance women’s rights and gender equality;

4.Notes that information on the EU budget’s gender impact remains insufficient; highlights shortcomings in manual collection, reporting and evaluation of gender-disaggregated data and including an intersectional approach; calls on the Commission to improve data quality; points out that the key learning of the application of the pilot methodology was the limited possibility of assigning concrete scores due to a lack of required data; calls for all data to be comparable so as to be useful for policymaking; stresses therefore the importance of data collection requirements to enable comprehensive collection of gender-disaggregated data in the context of all relevant EU policies and urges the Commission to treat this as a priority; urges the Commission to treat this as a priority;

5.Calls on the Commission to analyse what percentage of the EU budget should support gender equality; further calls for objectives and performance indicators in all future legislation, including the next MFF.