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Not all countries have managed to follow France' s example, which I hope will bear fruit elsewhere.

I should like to say, Mrs Péry that I consider the fact that you are organising a Council of Ministers for Women' s Affairs and that every government in the European Union has one member responsible for equal opportunity issues to be of the utmost importance.

This is the only way in which 'mainstreaming' can be introduced across the board in government and in which the equal opportunity policy will gain the high profile necessary to give it substance.

I shall end, Mrs Péry, by asking you a question.

As the Ministry of Equal Opportunities in Portugal is now defunct, who will represent my country at the meeting on 27 October in Paris?

Mr President, I too would like to thank Minister Péry and Commissioner Diamantopoulou for today's debate. I would also like to thank the rapporteur, whose report not only contains observations on the situation of equal opportunities in the European Union, but also recommends a course of action.

I would particularly like to thank the Minister for the work she is doing in her own country and as President-in-Office of the Council, and I would like to make a connection between the work of the Presidency-in-Office of the Council and the work of the Commission, focusing on one point: employment.

The report before us is, I feel, a major synergistic work. The guidelines for 2001 on equal opportunities in the world of employment are starting to become better defined, more specific and more effective.

This is the way forward.

The Committee on Women's Rights would like to congratulate the Commission and also propose a few even more specific pointers.

I truly believe that this report and the Fifth Action Programme which lays down a strategy are the way forward.

We might do better to stop complaining, or rather to complain but, at the same time, to show due appreciation for the positive steps which are being taken to ensure that we make increasingly effective progress.

Mr President, I will not reply individually, except to Mrs Torres Marques, because her question is really direct and personal.

I was indeed sorry to see that Maria De Belém Roseira was no longer the representative.

She was very active during the Portuguese Presidency, but it is not up to me to make that decision, it is up to the Minister for Employment, whom we have invited to the conference on gender equality.

I will now respond generally on the issues, rather than give individual answers to any one of you.

Several of you have said gender equality policy did not start a year, two years, or three years ago.

Obviously not, and as someone involved with associations for social change - because I too, like many of you, have some thirty years of involvement with these associations behind me - I know how hard the social movement, the feminist movement and the intellectual movement, naturally, have worked to move this issue forward, and today we take our places in roles of responsibility in our institutions.

The history of the women' s movement goes back way over fifty years: I sometimes remember Olympe de Gouges, who dared to call for a declaration of women' s rights and gender equality, and was condemned to the scaffold in 1793.

Of course the history of feminism is very long.

My second comment is about inequality in the world of work.

Ladies and gentlemen, political will is clearly not enough to eliminate every possible social inequality overnight, especially in the world of work.

Management, the unions and the market have a role to play, but we do what we can by expressing a political will.

I can tell you in one sentence what I am doing about it: I have wasted no time proposing a law to improve equality in the world of work.

This is currently being debated in Parliament, and I have introduced a provision, which obviously does not suit everyone in my country, but which is compulsory and will compel each company or profession to negotiate on equality in the workplace every three years, covering salaries, conditions of work, career prospects, and access to lifelong training.

My third comment is about your doubts: plenty of speeches, plenty of documents, plenty of reports, but not enough actual progress towards quantified targets.

It is true that the reality in the European Union is that we have to take decisions as Fifteen and we differ culturally in relation to these issues.

Nevertheless, I believe in the need to fight for quantified targets, and to implement policy through indicators.

I did not mention this in my speech, but I am fully intending to propose a feasibility study on the gender institution to the Ministerial Conference, because we need an instrument for monitoring those indicators, and for exchanges of good practice.

Fourth point: the issues of the future.

Two of you mentioned new social rights, new fiscal rights.

I can tell you that will be the central theme of the Swedish Presidency, and I shall be following it with great interest, because the progress made will certainly inspire French action.

Fifth point: the Charter.

It is true that while much has been done compared with the initial stage of this document, we might have hoped for something more dynamic on decision-making.

I have not lost hope, however, of improving the text.

Sixth point: enlargement.

In New York I took the liberty of making myself clear on that issue on behalf of my country.

I shall be just as clear today, on behalf of the Presidency.

The candidates really must be helped to come up to the level of the acquis communautaire.

That seems clear.

Excluding gender equality from the acquis communautaire is unimaginable, and of course we shall be just as vigilant on that issue as on the others.

Finally, violence, prostitution, the grip of the Mafia. If Mrs Diamantopoulou wants to take a European initiative, because we have done things before at Community level to combat violence, I shall be there to support her.

Mr President, what we refer to here and what has been referred to for a century as the women' s problem is approached from two different angles, as the debate here in the House today has demonstrated.

The first reasons that the structure of the social and economic system is to blame for present inequalities and the policy of the European Union and of all the national governments is based on this reasoning.

The second approach says that women, themselves, are to blame for the inequality which exists in society.

This reasoning often leads to absurd distortions, one of which was heard here today, i.e. that the way in which women voted in Denmark was determined by some particular female chromosome and not by the social differences which they experience on a daily basis.

Honourable Members, Mrs Péry, the President-in-Office, has given us a superb analysis of the priorities of the French Presidency, which we all believe will be particularly important priorities.

I should like in my brief intervention to confine myself to the report.

The 97, 98 and 99 reports are not simply working papers.

They are political tools.

I should like to remind the House that the Commission' s legislative proposal due for debate calls for annual reports from the Member States on the subject of positive action because we really do believe that these reports are political tools for three reasons.

Firstly, they give us a picture of the situation.

As you will have seen, the reports contain analytical tables, data on each Member State and tables on all the individual sectors.

Secondly, because they allow us to make a comparative assessment of the Member States and a comparative assessment of the overall progress of the European Union over time.

Thirdly, because they form the basis for strategy, both for the European Union - even in the Charter of Fundamental Rights the fact that we had a picture of the current situation played an important role - and at national level, given that the Member States are able to use the comparative assessment to set national targets.

In my view, the reports which you have at your disposal concentrate on and highlight three issues. The first is the participation of women in decision-making.

The average participation of women is 18.6% in Europe, 28.9% in regional parliaments and 30% in Parliament and there appears to be a very minor increase in the order of 0.6% from one year to the next.

The second interesting comment concerns the wage differential between men and women which, at European level, is hovering at the unacceptable level of 23% to 24% and, in some regions of Europe, is as high as 40%.

The third interesting statistic concerns domestic violence, the violence which women suffer at European level.

I fully accept the comments in the report and the recommendations by Members who have spoken of the need to change the nature of the report.

I have taken your comments on board and I see that we need to concentrate on analysing data, especially the results of successful strategies and successful initiatives at national and European level, in order to give the report a strategic slant.

However, I need your help here.

My services face huge problems collecting data from national governments.

There are several countries, although one could cite examples for all countries, where it is impossible for us to collect statistics, where it is impossible for us to collect their experiences and results at national level from innovative policies in time.

I believe that, if you work together with your national governments, you can help the Commission to collate this data quickly, so that it in turn can present an analysis of them in the sort of report which you require.

Finally, as far as enlargement is concerned, it is of course, as Mrs Péry has said, a question of acquis communautaire.

However, I would stress that, in working with each of the candidate countries, we have been closely monitoring the question of sexual equality, as regards both the legislative framework and the creation of institutions which can support the application of these policies.

As you know, we have starting signing joint reports with each candidate country in order to monitor their adjustment to employment policy on an annual basis.

They contain an entire chapter devoted to the participation of women.

I should like, once again, to thank Mrs Dybkjær for the excellent, in-depth work contained in her report, which will be most useful to us in our next report, and I should like especially to thank the French Presidency and Mrs Péry for being so pro-active on the issue of equality during their presidency.

Community customs code

The next item is the recommendation for second reading (A5-0254/2000), on behalf of the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, on the Council common position for adopting a European Parliament and Council Regulation amending Council Regulation (EEC) No 2913/92 establishing the Community Customs Code (6995/2000 - C5-0267/2000 - 1998/0134(COD)) (Rapporteur: Mrs Palacio Vallelersundi).

Mr President, Commissioner, this morning we will approve the Council common position definitively adopting this reform of the Community Customs Code.

It could be thought, given that Parliament has not tabled amendments to the Council common position, that we have before us a perfect text.

That is not the case, but it is a satisfactory text and, having given it great thought and following an extensive debate, the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market decided not to table any amendments.

What are the reasons for this?

We need a little history.

The reform of the Community Customs Code was enshrined in Article 253 of the current code and a reform was planned for before 1 January 1998.

We are therefore somewhat behind schedule.

This reform is important because it aims to re-examine the Community Customs Code in accordance with the progress of the internal market and of administrative techniques.

It is therefore an important and urgent reform in a sector that, as we are all well aware, is the real core of European construction.

Building a common customs system has been one of the major achievements in that progress towards European construction.

The proposal aims to simplify customs processes by means of computerised or paperless declarations, to make the rules more flexible, to improve the procedure for collecting duties and to provide a more solid basis for applying the principle of good faith to imports that are subject to the preferential regime, establishing legal instruments that enable us to combat fraud and offering greater legal security.

At first reading, in the Paasilinna report, Parliament adopted thirteen amendments of varying importance, which also met a variety of fates when they subsequently went to the Council.

In its joint position that was definitively and unanimously adopted, the Council incorporated eight amendments and rejected five.

I am not going to comment on the eight amendments that were adopted, as we are all in agreement with them.

I am going to discuss the five amendments that were not incorporated.

Three of them - Amendments Nos 4, 5 and 7, referred to the commitology procedure.

These amendments need to be considered in the new context of the interinstitutional agreement, and therefore, Parliament can agree to not insisting on these commitology amendments given that they have been superseded to a certain extent by the new interinstitutional framework.

With Amendment No 15, Parliament wished to introduce a recital urging the customs authorities to apply customs rules correctly, to establish monitoring measures in order to ensure that it was applied consistently and to facilitate action against fraud.

The Council considered that it was not drafted suitably in order to be included in the Community Customs Code and pointed out that there is a Green Paper - which is currently being converted into rules - specifically for combating fraud.

We were therefore also able to accept this amendment not being incorporated.

Finally, Amendment No 11 requested that this modification to the Community Customs Code enter into force before 1 January 2000 and is, therefore, no longer valid.

Aside from these amendments, it should be considered that the common position modified the original text on which Parliament had agreed on two important points: the first is Article 220, in which the Commission aimed to maintain a longer period for conducting the investigations that could lead to a prosecution for fraud or a wrongful declaration.

The Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, following a long debate, considered that it was not reasonable to maintain legal uncertainty for a period of six years, and that three years, which is the period set, is a more reasonable period of time for establishing, with the appropriate means and the average proceedings, whether or not there were irregularities in a declaration.

With regard to the modification of Paragraph 6 of Article 215, it should be said that we are dealing with a deeper issue, because the intention is that the additional declaration could be made anywhere in the European Union, especially wherever in the European Union the undertaking in question has its headquarters.

On this point we consider that, given administrative and technical advances, instead of making an amendment on the legislative text, we preferred an amendment to the draft resolution that I hope the Commission will be able to accept. In a subsequent reform of the Community Customs Code, this will enable this idea to be incorporated, which is one that we feel is important and deserves to be promoted and supported by the European Parliament.

Mr President, in the increasingly open economic climate in which the European Union must operate, and given the need to establish trade relations that ensure the competitiveness of undertakings, it is crucial that we establish a legal framework that sets the same rules of play for everyone.

In this sense, the Community Customs Code is an essential support for the European Union' s trade policy, as well, as we are already aware, as being an essential instrument for protecting the Union' s financial interests.

The progress made on the internal market, the gradual growth in trade due to the increasing opening up of the markets and the progress of the information society mean that the Community Customs Code needs to be brought up to date with the development of Community and international trade.