General budget of the European Union for the financial year 2027 - all sections

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

A.whereas gender equality is a fundamental value of the European Union and the EU is committed to promoting gender equality and gender mainstreaming in all its actions in accordance with Article 8 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU); whereas budgets are never gender neutral and need to be established with the clear objective of anti-discrimination and the do no harm principle linked to gender equality, to ensure none of the activities funded directly or indirectly harms gender equality; whereas budgets that are gender responsive should be transparent, efficient and focused on delivering measurable outcomes;

B.whereas organised anti-gender movements, defined as movements seeking to undermine gender equality as a core value of democracy, increasingly target gender equality, sexual and reproductive health and rights, LGBTQI+ equality and non-discrimination constituting gender equality backlash; whereas those attacks are often linked to wider pressure on democracy, the rule of law and civic space; whereas gender equality is therefore also a democratic resilience issue;

C.whereas the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) plays a key role in providing independent expertise, comparable data and practical tools for gender mainstreaming, including helping to ensure that gender is mainstreamed across the Union budget and in all policies and funding streams, as well as evidence-based gender equality policy across the Union, given the challenges women and girls face across the Union in a global climate of democratic backlash;

D.whereas the European citizens’ initiative “My Voice, My Choice: For Safe and Accessible Abortion” gathered over 1.1 million valid signatures and reached the required thresholds in 19 Member States; whereas the European Parliament expressed its support for the initiative in its resolution of 17 December 2025, and the Commission replied positively on 26 February 2026; whereas safe and legal access to abortion care remains unequal across the Union and financial barriers continue to undermine access to sexual and reproductive health and rights;

E.whereas Directive (EU) 2024/1385 on combating violence against women and domestic violence must be transposed by 14 June 2027; whereas Directive (EU) 2023/970 on pay transparency had to be transposed by 7 June 2026 and requires effective enforcement; whereas the revised Victims’ Rights Directive must be transposed within two years of its entry into force; whereas timely implementation depends on guidance, training, data collection and cooperation with civil society and social partners;

F.whereas the Gender Action Plan (GAP) III is a strong tool for EU external action and should be well implemented in the 2027 budget combatting attacks on women rights, SRHR and authoritarian pressure; whereas the next GAP IV should embody the same ambitions to contribute to gender equality, democratic resilience, peace and sustainable development;

G.whereas the unequal distribution of unpaid care and domestic work remains a structural cause of the gender employment, pay and pension gaps;

H.whereas the European Parliament has repeatedly called for increased funding for the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), Daphne Strand, Equality and Rights Strand of the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme, CSOs under the NDICI programme, EU4Health programme, ESF+ Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI) strand; whereas Parliament has repeatedly also called for applying gender mainstreaming in the main European Funds such as Horizon Europe, CAP, Cohesion Funds and NGEU;

1.Calls for the implementation of gender mainstreaming at all stages of the budget; stresses the importance of gender impact assessments ex ante and ex post as an effective tool to foster gender equality across the EU; stresses the importance of earmarking and safeguarding dedicated funding and establishing specific objectives for gender equality within the programmes of the next MFF to ensure effective tracking of resources and to ensure that the “gender equality principle” is a genuine horizontal priority across programmes, rather than merely a consideration; underlines that a gender perspective must be integrated into the preparation, design, monitoring and evaluation of expenditure; reiterates the need to further develop the gender tracking methodology, in order to track the overall funding volume dedicated to gender equality in the Union budget; stresses that Union expenditure should support equal opportunities, increase women's participation in education, training and the labour market; reiterates the importance of disaggregated data collection, monitoring and reporting; calls for the mandatory collection, reporting and evaluation of comparable gender-disaggregated data to ensure the budget works for all, and is flexible and targeted;

2.Recalls the Commission’s decision of 26 February 2026 and positive reply to the My Voice My Choice European Citizen’s Initiative (ECI); calls on the Commission to support, including through sufficient budgeting and providing information and guidelines, Member States in the implementation of this decision on My Voice My Choice ECI; reminds the Member States to make full use of the possibility to include spending on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), including safe and legal abortion, in their national ESF+ envelops; calls for an increase in the budget allocated to sexual and reproductive rights in general, and access to the right to abortion under the EU4Health Programme;

3.Stresses that infertility is an important public health challenge and that people experiencing infertility often face significant medical, psychological and financial burdens; calls on the Commission and the Member States to improve equal access to infertility prevention, diagnosis, medically assisted reproduction services and psychosocial support through existing Union funding instruments, including ESF+ and EU4Health, to reduce inequalities between Member States;