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European Women's Lobby Newsletter Issue 2 1998
The European Women's Lobby have a big blue newsletter, 27 pages in very big print. Among the EWLs campaigns is one targeting national political parties across Europe to encourage them to comply with the principle of alternation between male and female candidates. This, they hope, will bring a representative democracy closer. It is one of a number of campaigns that EWL members run, in addition to the European Women's Talent Bank - the first database of women's expertise in Europe available on the internet, they say.
But this is the publications column so back to the newsletter. And here we have another publication suffering, quite understandably, from the inescapable fact that Community affairs are conducted in a foreign language even when the words are seemingly in English. For example: 'On the initiative of Padraig Flynn, Commissioner with responsibility for employment and social affairs, the European Commission has adopted its first progress report on the follow-up to the 1996 Communication on "Incorporating equal opportunities for women and men into all Community policies and activities"'.
On the other hand, and this column likes to be balanced, the newsletter is free.
Status Report on the Social Dialogue 1997
This European Commission newsletter has a three chapter introduction (the treaty of Amsterdam, the employment summit) before getting down to what the social partners - unions and employers organisations - achieved last year. To be fair, the summit chapter is not completely irrelevant; partners had their own confabulation before the conference in Luxembourg and emerged with a joint decleration before the talks. The Commission tends to measure the effectiveness of the social dialogue by the number and spread of 'texts' issued jointly. Page 13 of the newsletter shows the distribution of texts per topic - they are rising in every sector - but we have to report that five per cent of texts are about the social dialogue itself.
Economic policy is by far the most talked about subject for the unions and employers, with working conditions making up thirteen per cent and health and safety seven. Everyone wants to be an economist. After discussing themselves and the state of the economy, the social partners found time in 1997 to issue declarations, final declarations, joint statements, joint contributions and joint draft responses. They also drew up recommendation framework agreements, signed codes of conduct and charters and approved committee reports. All in all, 1997 was a bonanza year for joint texts and social dialogue forums, both reaching points on the scale hitherto undreamed of. But a bad year for trees.
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