AS (2013) CR 09

2013 ORDINARY SESSION

________________________

(First part)

REPORT

Ninth sitting

Friday 25 January 2013 at 10 a.m.

In this report:

1.       Speeches in English are reported in full.

2.       Speeches in other languages are reported using the interpretation and are marked with an asterisk.

3.       Speeches in German and Italian are reproduced in full in a separate document.

4.       Corrections should be handed in at Room 1059A not later than 24 hours after the report has been circulated.

The contents page for this sitting is given at the end of the report.

Ms Wurm, Vice-President of the Assembly, took the Chair at 10 a.m.

      THE PRESIDENT – The sitting is open.

1. Written declarations

      THE PRESIDENT – The following written declaration has been tabled, No. 535, entitled “The right to the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society”, which has been signed by 34 members, Document 13112. Any member, substitute, observer or partner for democracy may add his or her signature to this written declaration in the Table Office, Room 1083, at any time before the close of the part-session today. I remind members that written declarations tabled during this part-session may be signed during the next part-session, after which time they will be published.

2. Changes in the membership of committees

      THE PRESIDENT – Our first business is to consider the changes to the membership of committees set out in document Commissions (2013) 01 Addendum 9. Are the proposed changes in the membership of the Assembly’s committees agreed to?

The changes are agreed to.

3. Gender equality, reconciliation of personal and working life and shared responsibility

THE PRESIDENT – The first debate this morning is on the report entitled “Gender equality, reconciliation of personal and working life and shared responsibility”, Document 13080, to be presented by Ms Carmen Quintanilla, on behalf of the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination.

I remind members that speaking times in this morning’s debates are limited to four minutes. In order to finish by 11.45 a.m., in time for the next debate, we must interrupt the list of speakers at about 11.35 a.m. to allow time for the reply and the vote. Is this agreed to?

It is agreed to.

I call Ms Quintanilla, the rapporteur. You have 13 minutes in total, which you may divide between presentation of the report and reply to the debate.

Ms QUINTANILLA (Spain)* – It is a real honour to address the Assembly. We have an important debate about gender equality – equality between men and women. We will discuss how to reconcile family, professional and personal life, and consider shared responsibility, but the debate is about more than that, because the Parliamentary Assembly has given all of us in all our parliaments the go-ahead to seek to make the work-life balance a fundamental pillar of equality. Over the past few decades, all countries have worked hard to legislate to make it possible to reconcile work and family life, but notwithstanding all those efforts, difficulties persist in the lives of women. They have to be mothers and to look after their children, as well as the elderly, while at the same time they are supposed to do their jobs outside the home.

To give you some figures on the quality of life in Europe, the family life and work survey has confirmed that men and women’s share of work in the home varies hugely: on average, 80% of women are involved in family life on a daily basis, compared with only 45% of men. Across Europe, equality varies from a minimum of 17% of men sharing domestic chores in Turkey up to 70% of men lending a hand at home in Sweden. Despite the fact that women now rightly have full equality, they therefore continue to do the lion’s share of the work in the home.

That is why we must look at the pillars on which equality is based. We need legislation to afford greater rights to parental leave, more flexible forms of working – for example, flexible hours, flexitime and teleworking – and ways in which companies can voluntarily make it easier for women to reconcile work and family life. The report therefore seeks to ensure that we approach the issue of equality through those three pillars: we need more equality, corporate efforts and family assistance. We can achieve a work-life balance only by putting such things on the statute book, but that must go hand in hand with a change in people’s mind-sets and mentalities.

The watchword is “responsibility”, which is an extremely important word. Through this debate, we parliamentarians must recognise what we need to do back in our national parliaments. Shared responsibility means that we must push for a change in people’s mentalities. If we are to bring about change, we must recognise that, although it is all well and good to enact and amend laws, we have to change people’s mind-sets, because otherwise women will continue to bear the brunt of the responsibility in the home. That is why we need to get down to work and ensure that changes in legislation lead to a change in mentalities – for instance, so that looking after children is a job for mum and dad, and that looking after the elderly is equally a job for men and women alike. Work in the home is a shared responsibility for both men and women, which is important to bear in mind in this debate on gender equality in the 21st century.

      By the same token, it is extremely important to discuss how we can reconcile working, family and personal life. We should not look at that solely from women’s point of view, because this is a problem for men and women alike. We should talk about working life, personal life and private life as an interlinked network of interests of men and women. That is why the Parliamentary Assembly has adopted measures to help women in the context of the move towards greater equality. All member states have a genuine commitment to bring about real equality between men and women, but there is still progress to be made. The challenge of equality is essentially the challenge of reconciling working and family life. To that end, we should change our laws but, most importantly, we should change people’s mind-sets to ensure that men and women join together on the long road towards equality.

      THE PRESIDENT – Thank you, Ms Quintanilla. You have five minutes remaining.

      I call Ms Fusu to speak on behalf of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.

      Ms FUSU (Republic of Moldova)* – I congratulate Ms Quintanilla on her generous report and humane stance on an abiding issue: how to strike the balance between private life and working life to everyone’s satisfaction.

Equality between men and women must mean both having equal opportunities to define their future. With the change in family structures that we see throughout Europe, society and the State tend effectively to punish women and families for having the courage to have a child. Elisabeth Badinter, the French philosopher who is quoted in the report, in her book, Le Conflit: la femme et la mčre, denounces the tyranny of motherhood. I agree with the American scientist Anne-Marie Slaughter, who says that, given the current social and economic climate, women can have it all but not now. Sharing responsibility within the family and putting aside traditional roles requires a change of mentality.

In our consumer society, we often forget that a work-life balance is essential for economic well-being and for the labour market, in order better to use existing human resources. For example, a wider share-out of responsibilities and knowledge reduces the risks for a company, and improved staff motivation and commitment increases productivity. I reiterate three recommendations underlined by Jérôme Ballarin, author of the report submitted to the French Government in 2012 by the Observatoire de la parentalité en entreprise, which seeks to promote fatherhood. Cultural, organisational and managerial transformations are needed in companies so that women can play a full role, with equal pay. There must also be a revolution within couples so that men can play a greater role in the household and in doing domestic chores. We also need to encourage men who are willing to work from home, or to work part-time or flexi-time in order to help others in the household and help their spouses to have a career.

We must think through our policies carefully. Dissemination of information and best practice will help to change mind-sets. A new social contract is needed for a fairer share-out of the burden between men and women.

THE PRESIDENT – Thank you, Ms Fusu.

I call Mr Kürkçü to speak on behalf of the Group of the Unified European Left.

Mr KÜRKÇÜ (Turkey) – I fully support this comprehensive report, which addresses questions faced by women in all countries across the globe. As a man from a country where, compared with the rest of Europe, women face more difficulties in their working lives, I find the report even more important. My country’s government now encourages families to have three or more children, but has not adopted measures to allow women to compete with men in the labour market, which is causing women to withdraw from the workplace. The measures envisaged by the report would help women in Turkey and other countries that have similar conditions pertaining to women. The report takes a balanced approach to the situation of working women, urging men to share responsibilities with women, and encouraging governments to introduce reforms to allow women to have equality with men in social life, working life and private life.

I want to bring to your attention the fact that Pinar Selek, whose case has gone on for 15 years, was yesterday given a life sentence by a court in Turkey, despite there being no evidence, no witness and no just trial. Strasbourg university, where she is a doctoral student, staged a one-hour strike in her support. I call on all women in the Assembly to support her case, in solidarity with all oppressed women across Europe and particularly in my country.

THE PRESIDENT – Thank you, Mr Kürkçü.

I call Ms Kovács to speak on behalf of the Group of the European People’s Party.

Ms KOVÁCS (Serbia) – I congratulate our dear colleague, Ms Quintanilla.

The question is whether women can reconcile their working life with their personal and family life. I start with the simple fact that among the member States of the Council of Europe, there are member States and non-member States of the European Union. There are countries that have instituted joint parental duties and leave, and those that have not yet done so. It is essential to eliminate inequalities and to raise awareness of the gender wage gap. Despite our differing views on this issue, we should all call for positive measures in favour of women that take into account career breaks and the different career patterns of women and men.

There is an appreciable difference between the opportunities for women and men in many member States. Women play a basic role in raising children. Due to the difficulties in returning to the labour market, women therefore have lower personal incomes than men.

Ensuring suitable childcare provision is an essential step towards equal opportunities for women and men. We must also establish adequately paid parental leave that is shared between both parents. For example, if a minimum of nine months’ parental leave could be taken, a third of it should be allocated to one parent, a third to the other parent and the last three months should be used according to the family’s needs. In a single-parent household, the one parent should be entitled to take all the leave.

Given that one of the Europe 2020 targets is to increase the female employment rate to 60%, it is necessary to promote women’s employment, increase their access to and participation in all levels of the labour market, help close pay gaps and support women’s financial independence. It is also of the utmost importance to promote women entrepreneurs and women’s participation in science and technology, in particular in decision-making positions.

Unbalanced participation in domestic tasks generates inactivity traps and unequal access to the labour market. Facilitating the re-entry of parents into the labour market is only the first step. Efforts must also be made to balance the professional and private lives of employees. There must be shared responsibility within the family. It is essential that the domestic tasks in a household are redistributed when fathers take paternity leave.

The implementation of a tax reduction system for family-friendly enterprises that promote facilities such as childcare and flexible working hours, and the introduction of tax incentives that encourage fathers to make use of their paternity leave are good solutions to the problems that I have mentioned.

      The Group of the European People's Party looks forward to a future in which we have eliminated the inequality and discrimination suffered by women in their private lives and in their careers.

      THE PRESIDENT – Thank you, Ms Kovács. I call Ms Bilgehan to speak on behalf of the Socialist Group.

      Ms BİLGEHAN (Turkey)* – If more women entered the labour market and took up paid employment, world growth would receive a considerable boost according to a report by OECD experts on inequality between men and women. It is estimated that a perfect balance in the work place between women and men would lead to an increase in GDP of some 12% over 20 years. The countries in Europe that would benefit the most are Italy, Greece and Hungary.

For that to happen, a number of conditions have to be put in place and the sharing of responsibilities has to be fairer. Fewer women than men take up paid employment, but women generally spend more time on domestic responsibilities. According to OECD, women spend 4.45 hours a day on domestic responsibilities, whereas the figure for men is only 45 minutes. I think that even that figure is something of an exaggeration. A better balance is struck in the United Kingdom and Germany.

According to Ms Quintanilla’s interesting report, on average, some 80% of women are involved in domestic tasks on a daily basis. The figure for men is only 45%. Of course, the inequality varies from one country to another. The lowest figure for men is from Turkey, where 17% of men are involved in domestic responsibilities. The figure is some 70% in Sweden. Those figures show a correlation between the participation of women in the work force and the sharing of domestic responsibilities. In Turkey, there has been an obvious regression in the number of women who are actively employed, with the proportion being 25%. The average in European Union countries is about 60%. It is clear, as Mr Kürkçü said, that women are being pushed out of the labour market. In Sweden, 80% of women are actively employed.

The report shows that the main reason why women are not professionally employed in Turkey is the difficulty of reconciling family life and professional life. I know about that myself, because I have three children and a family. At the same time, I have a career, so it is not impossible to reconcile the two. However, certain conditions must be put in place. Policies need to be introduced to fight against and prevent social exclusion. It is important that women take up employment for economic reasons, but also for personal reasons.

Sweden allows 13 months of parental leave but at the other extreme, some countries allow a minimum of just six weeks. It is important to have greater equality in parental leave. Both parents must shoulder the responsibility for their children. Other facilities must be put in place, such as child care services and flexible working. Employers in the public and private sectors need to enable employees to handle their working time better.

As Ms Quintanilla said, this is a question of mind-set. For example, in advertising, women are always shown as being at home, engaged in domestic activities. That is another issue that we need to tackle. Thank you for this very interesting report, Ms Quintanilla.

THE PRESIDENT – Thank you, Ms Bilgehan. I call Mr Mendes Bota.

Mr MENDES BOTA (Portugal) – Ms Quintanilla’s excellent report pushes the boundaries. She rightly goes beyond the field of mere campaigning into that of comprehensive and effective measures. She proposes assistance services, equal parental leave, financial aid and legal reforms, among other measures. I completely agree with those things.

Such a breakthrough in the sharing of parental responsibilities would involve a direct disturbance to people’s beliefs and relationships, both in their personal lives and with their employers. Consequently, it would stir up the long-established status quo. However, the status quo was not why this Assembly was created. It certainly is not what the people expect of us. There are thousands, nay millions, of women out there – capable, independent and creative individuals – who are just waiting for the day when their full potential is legitimised by a world that is forever struggling with its moral shortcomings.

In all the talk of kings and despots, there is one tyranny that, although at times it has been silent and invisible, immediately meets the eye in our modern societies: the reign of gender discrimination. Its ruler bears no face and brandishes no sword, yet his rule has outlasted that of any other known to man. In order to overthrow gender despotism, we must first lay the foundations for our battle headquarters. The foundations are neither concrete nor simple in composition, but they are as solid as the thickest iron and as unbreakable as the sturdiest pole because they stand on principle, and on principles nations thrive or falter.

      It is true that significant State and employer investment is required in order to reconcile family and professional duties. It involves financial assistance, substantial adjustments and support services, all of which are costly, but how many of you are willing to continue turning a blind eye to systematic discrimination against one gender by the other? We are talking about our spouses, friends and sisters. We are well aware of the sacrifices that most women make when faced with the inevitable choice between motherhood and their jobs, careers and social lives, and often their very independence. However, these sacrifices are often unwilling and stem from a lack of initiative in the main stakeholders. We, the lawmakers, are largely to blame.

      It is true that Rome was not built in a day, but surely some grand design must have been at the core of its first foundations. The first stone laid was a sacred bond between the people and immortality. Today the names of those pioneers are forever inscribed in fire in the back of our minds. Let us modern explorers be the flag-bearers of another great ideal – gender equality.

      THE PRESIDENT – Thank you. I call Ms Bourzai.

      Ms BOURZAI (France)* – I pay tribute to the excellent report of our colleague, Carmen Quintanilla. It is good that it goes beyond the male-female angle and puts the debate in the wider context of the role of the family and the organisation of private life in our modern societies. I support most of the conclusions in the draft resolution, whose proposals are based on best practice as observed in our member States. That is what the Council of Europe is all about: it is a true forum for exchange with a view to arriving at a better understanding of the social challenges faced by our fellow citizens.

      Last year, a French academic, Laurence Cocandeau-Bellanger, published an interesting study on women at work. She defined three strategies for reconciling professional and family life. The first is anticipation: trying to forecast what might happen in the course of a woman’s life in order to ensure a better life balance. Unexpected events, of course, are a risk. The second strategy is action: living in the present and ensuring greater mobility between different lives. The risk is that women will feel guilt about not being able to do enough. The last strategy is distance: standing back and looking at the situation, which often involves conflict, with a view to coming up with the best possible solution. However, as that academic says, there is no miracle solution: each strategy must be adjusted to personal circumstances. She invites women to take charge of their lives and to do the reconciling, rather than merely being reconciled. However, that position is not really tenable if there is no support within the family or outside it.

      That is where the report’s interest lies. We as politicians must do what we can to come up with adequate technical responses so that women can lead full professional and family lives. We know the avenues we need to explore – support to work, crčches, working time and modes of working – but we should not limit ourselves to those alone. We must bring about a change in mentality. I support the rapporteur’s insistence on the principle of shared responsibilities within the home. A new division of responsibilities within the family is key. If we promoted that, we would be able to move beyond the cliché that women are less effective in the workplace because they are always more attentive to what is going on at home: the youngest child has bronchitis, for example, or school is closed. Maternity should no longer be seen as a choice that affects one’s professional career, nor should childlessness be considered a sine qua non for a woman to succeed in the workplace.

      Looking beyond the issue of employment, shared responsibility is a solution if we want to reconcile maternity with other demands. As Laurence Cocandeau-Bellanger writes, it is important for women to be able to juggle four different spheres: family, professional life, individual life – having time for oneself – and the social sphere of leisure and recreation. We must reconcile those various spheres and promote development on this issue.

      THE PRESIDENT – Thank you. I call Ms Palihovici.

      Ms PALIHOVICI (Republic of Moldova) – I appreciate the rapporteur’s work in exploring the sensitive issue of sharing responsibilities and providing career growth opportunities for women. Many will say that the issue is not urgent during this financial and economic crisis, or that that is how the world is: men make money and have careers, and women take care of the home and raise children. Maybe it was so thousands of years ago, but today the world is different. It has been changed by new rules of governance and new technology, all of which were accepted for the good of mankind.

For the sake of humanity, we must undertake concrete actions to offer women equal opportunities in professional and career growth. It should be done without affecting families and the healthy, intelligent raising of children, which is why the emphasis should be on sharing responsibilities within the family. A good example is shared parental responsibilities, when both parents are equally involved in raising the children. In order to avoid potential conflicts between the sexes when deciding how to share responsibilities, State policies should help men and women understand the benefits of doing so. We need to develop programmes that aim to harmonise family and working life, and they should be made part of national and European policies on gender equality. We need to develop educational curriculums to cultivate citizens’ receptivity to human rights. We need to develop health care, social care and child care services. We also need to educate women and men so that they accept the sharing of responsibilities.

If a country’s legislation provides for up to three years’ maternity leave and a woman is not in professional competition during that time, when she returns to her office, she will not be regarded in the same way as other members of her team. What looks like positive State action – offering mothers more time to be with their children – affects her career and welfare. That is why it is important to analyse and study the phenomenon and develop the right policies and legislation. The reconciliation of work and personal life represents a challenge for both women and men. A legislative framework and appropriate policies are needed to achieve equality between men and women and to facilitate women’s access to work and to active participation in political, social and economic life.

      The rapporteur’s analysis shows that we should develop international co-operation and promote the positive experiences of some western European countries. Council of Europe member States should actively co-operate with international organisations working on gender equality to foster the empowerment of women. International organisations play a key role in lobbying on these issues and provide support for local government and other authorities in promoting participation in civil society, advocacy on gender quality and the political, social and professional empowerment of women.

      THE PRESIDENT – Thank you. I call Ms Brasseur.

      Ms BRASSEUR (Luxembourg)* – I thank our rapporteur, Ms Quintanilla, who has presented a very balanced report and touched on all the necessary elements. It is important that we are having this debate in the presence of the deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe, who follows these issues closely.

      There are five aspects that are closely intertwined when we talk about reconciling professional and family life in the context of equality between men and women: mind-set, infrastructure, logistics and legislation, social issues and parental responsibility. On the mind-set, when it comes to sharing responsibilities between men and women, there is a geographical disparity between the north and south and between the east and west, with varying attitudes between those points. Culture is important here, too. I do not know whether there are any Italian members in the Chamber, but the symbol of the Italian mama is a strong one in the Italian mind-set, and shows that there are very fixed representations of the role played by different sexes in different cultures. If we want to change a mind-set, we have to create the conditions that make it possible, and among those is the necessary infrastructure. Local, accessible child care services are important if we are to reconcile family and professional life.

Moving on to logistics and legislation, businesses have a responsibility in this matter. They need to build greater flexibility into working hours. We will have to revisit our labour legislation in some countries where it is far too rigid and does not afford the flexibility that we require. Progress is needed there.

Turning to social issues, we know that in countries where women have secured their place in the labour market and have considerable responsibilities, they have high incomes and a high standard of living. However, single women bringing up children have to work, and find it difficult to juggle all the necessary elements. The social question is an important one, and we have to be able to help women in that position.

The fifth element I referred to is that of responsibility within a couple – either a man and a woman or persons of the same sex. The responsibility for children is a shared one. People cannot just pretend that they do not have children, and priority has to be given to looking after them. The community cannot substitute for parents in caring for or bringing up children. No, parents have a role, and that needs to be said. This debate is not so much pro-women as concerned with what is important for the coming generation.

THE PRESIDENT – Thank you. The next speaker is Ms Gafarova.

Ms GAFAROVA (Azerbaijan) – I congratulate Ms Quintanilla on this excellent report. Reconciling professional and family life is important because it directly concerns women’s rights. As we know, gender equality is one of the fundamental human rights, as principal international rights documents state. In international law, women are provided with broad guarantees that they can enjoy their rights. That should be axiomatic, but in practice, for different reasons, it is often not the case and women still face discrimination. If we are to fulfil those guarantees and live up to those stated values, we must join our efforts.

I take this opportunity to give a brief account of the measures taken in Azerbaijan to promote women’s participation in social, political and economic life. Azerbaijan was the first country in the east to give women the right to vote at the beginning of the 20th century. It has been an independent State for 21 years, which is only a short span of time from a historical point of view. Despite this, its statehood has enjoyed significant successes in all spheres, including that of human rights and freedoms. Reforms in various fields and measures to promote the activity of citizens in the formation of civil society have significantly enhanced the position of women in our society.

Today, Azerbaijani women are active in every sphere of public life and in some they constitute a majority. For example, in public health they make up 78.6% of those involved; in education, 71%, and in culture, 75%. Furthermore, in public health, women occupy 37% of managerial positions, in education, 44% and in culture and tourism, 23%. Some 16% of our members of parliament are women. One of the vice-speakers is a woman, and the ombudsman is a woman. There are three women who are full members of the national academy of sciences and 12 other women members. That is proof of the special care taken by the Azerbaijani Government to improve the lives and chances of women and to promote their activity in society.

Recently, there has been a significant increase in women’s participation in political and public decisions and in the economic field. That has been achieved by measures implemented by the government, which is now taking further steps to encourage women to fulfil their potential in economic life. Loans are being made available for women to establish their own businesses, and they are being sought to fill various vacancies. The State has also introduced measures to help women in rural areas to start their own farming business. I hope that such actions will help to solve the problems that we are considering in this debate.

I strongly believe that enhancing women’s representation in all spheres of life, including the economic and social, and not just those traditionally associated with women, such as education and health, will enable us to achieve further significant success, and to that end we should join our efforts.

THE PRESIDENT – Thank you. The next speaker is Mr Triantafyllos.

      Mr TRIANTAFYLLOS (Greece) – I congratulate the rapporteur on this inspiring, balanced report.

In a modern democracy, gender equality is commonly promoted as a fundamental human right and a basic aim. Our vision for a better society can be achieved through men and women sharing equally goods, obligations and rights in all aspects of everyday social, personal, professional and family life. In decisions about what a person is going to study, which types of work he or she will undertake, how many children he or she will have, whether he or she is going to participate in public affairs or take positions of political responsibility, there will never be lasting change until our societies dismantle gender stereotypes.

During the global economic crisis, gender inequality seems to be growing. Combating gender disparity is not a luxury. Rather, it is a central component of economic, social and cultural policies enacted in an effort to overcome the crisis. Gender-based discrimination is associated with and aggravated by other types of social discrimination. It is mostly young or unemployed women, immigrants, single parents, disabled persons, Roma and ethnic and religious minorities who face the effects of economic crisis, and often they are victimised by male violence in all its forms. It is essential that, in public interventions, top priority is given to all these groups of women.

Furthermore, European and national policy making has to aim at the full and equal integration of women into the labour market. When it comes to harmonising professional and family life, in most European countries, women continue to be the primary carers in families and are responsible for the care of children, elderly persons or patients and disabled persons, and for managing all domestic duties. As a result, they participate in the labour market under terms that are inferior to men’s, and their participation is more time-restricted.

Fostering gender equality imposes the need to take steps to support parents of minors and to change traditional gender role attitudes to care and domestic duties. A profound change of mentality is therefore necessary, beyond any other action taken. Increasing nominal insurance terms due to pregnancy, providing more extended paid parental leave, improving child care services and establishing all-day schooling are some of the measures that can be taken to achieve shared responsibility.

In this framework, respect for diversity and equal opportunities between men and women is of prime importance, and significant gender equality policies can be further developed throughout Europe. Progress on the path to gender equality is slow, however, and major steps need to follow.

THE PRESIDENT – Thank you. I call Ms Blanco.

Ms BLANCO (Spain)* – I endorse everything in Ms Quintanilla’s report. She is a fellow parliamentarian and a compatriot, but, more than that, she is a good friend. It goes to show just how much we have in common that although she is from the Group of the European People's Party and I am from the Socialist Group, we can join forces over the political divide in working for equality between men and women, particularly in this area.

Many of our countries, particularly in southern Europe, are contending with a serious economic and financial crisis that has led to almost 6 million people finding themselves out of work. When we look more closely at the labour market, we can see who has been pushed out of that market – women. Essentially, they now find themselves having to provide the social services that the State used to provide. Women are now doing that job.

Who is now looking after 1.8 million households on small amounts of benefits? There has been a breakdown in the social contract between labour and capital, because capital is non-productive and speculative and does not create labour or jobs. The few jobs that now remain are not for women – they were the first to be shown the door and ousted from the labour market. Where is that going to take them? We now find ourselves in the midst of an economic, social and institutional crisis that has come down on our societies, and the brunt is being borne by women in their daily lives.

Many of us here – our generation of women – were able to make the choice of either being a mother and working, or becoming a parliamentarian, but these days many of our daughters of working age have to ask themselves whether they will opt for a job or for motherhood, because the situation is becoming ever more difficult. That is why we have to look these facts in the face in seeking to resolve the issue of equality between men and women in the family. We have to realise that it is unfair that our own daughters, and young people in our societies, have to make either/or choices, opting either to work or to have a family.

I express my solidarity with the Turkish woman who was condemned so cruelly. The fact that women are being humiliated merely for being mothers is a matter of concern for all of us.

THE PRESIDENT – Thank you. Ms Pashayeva is not here, so I call Ms Ohlsson.

Ms OHLSSON (Sweden) – I thank the rapporteur, Ms Carmen Quintanilla, for an excellent report. I hope that everyone will read and use it.

Gender equality policy is about ensuring that women and men, and boys and girls, have the same power to shape society and their own lives. The easiest way to see whether there is equality is to count and compare. Members can trust that I can count, because before I was a parliamentarian I worked as a mathematics teacher for 16 years, so I am good at counting.

We can start here and now. How many men and women are in the Parliamentary Assembly? There are more women here today because we are discussing gender equality, but sometimes there are more men than women when we discuss other questions. How many men and women are in your delegation? How many are there in the parliament in your country? Have women and men equal power to legislate? Everyone knows that the answer is no. And on economic equality between the sexes, women and men should have the same opportunities and conditions for education and paid work.

For the International Women’s Day last year, many organisations together initiated an extensive campaign to raise awareness on the current pay gap – 14.3% – between women and men in Sweden. The name of the campaign was 15.51, because women are not paid for 69 minutes of the working day. If you stop working at 5 p.m., you will only be paid until 15:51. I can tell you a secret. This year, I think the name will be 15.52 – women get their salary for one minute more – but we cannot wait more than 60 years for a fair salary. And if we include unpaid and household work, women work more than men.

In Sweden, men take only 20% of their parental leave. Some people might think that is a good thing, but it would take about 50 years before men and women shared the responsibility for their own children. I was also a biology teacher, but this is not about biology – some say it is, but it is not. It is about attitudes and power. Together we can change things. We have the tools: we have this report, the Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and so on. Women and men, girls and boys, should also have equal rights and opportunities in terms of physical integrity. We must also end violence against children and women. In Sweden, about 27 000 cases of violence against women are reported each year – about 74 per day – but that figure must be zero.

THE PRESIDENT – Thank you. I call Ms Boutin-Sweet, Observer from Canada.

Ms BOUTIN-SWEET (Canada)* – I am delighted to represent Canada in this important debate. Ms Quintanilla’s report rightly states that far-reaching changes in mentality are required if we are to fight work-related gender stereotypes. In order to bring about the change, it is important that families share their responsibilities and that men as well as women take parental leave.

A decision to take parental leave is often based on spouses’ respective wage levels, yet there is a gender pay gap owing partly to systemic gender discrimination. Only a few decades ago, men were the wage earners in a family – a few women worked, but their income just topped up the male income – so today, jobs are assessed on the basis of male skills, such as physical force, whereas skills deemed female are less valued. For instance, secretaries are often paid less than technicians and zookeepers are paid more than women who look after our children.

If we want women to participate fully in the wage market, we must eliminate the systemic wage gap. European Union countries have introduced measures to tackle it, yet the average gap is still about 17% to 18%. In 1996, the Canadian province of Quebec adopted a law on equal pay applying to male and female workers governed by the Quebec labour code. We hope that this law will be adopted at federal level as well. We use various means by which to assess workplaces and encourage equal pay for work of equal or equivalent value – for example, effort should cover both concentration and physical effort. Furthermore, we have five-yearly assessments to prevent pay imbalances and a committee has been set up to provide information and settle disputes.

Equal pay is as important as parental leave. We want to change habits and bring about far-reaching changes in the role of men and women in the workplace, and the example of Quebec shows that we can achieve results, if we have legislation with well-defined parameters, including a control and dispute settlement mechanism.

THE PRESIDENT – Thank you. I call Ms Zappone.

Ms ZAPPONE (Ireland) – The report highlights the persistent inequalities faced by women across Europe, and I commend Ms Quintanilla for outlining them so excellently. Her report starkly identifies the negative impact of the ongoing inequality and stereotyping at the heart of our societies. Continued and widespread gender stereotyping of role divisions between men and women in the home has real and concrete implications for the employment of women and for their financial security, with women continuing to face greater risk of poverty and social exclusion, again as Ms Quintanilla outlined so well. I hope and expect that we all know some of these women, so that we can pass our resolutions with empathy.

These issues are not new to this Assembly, the Council of Europe or to the wider public debate. Almost 20 years ago, the Committee of Ministers issued its Recommendation (96) 5 on reconciling work and family life. Ten years later, in 2006, this Assembly called on the Committee of Ministers to fully implement that recommendation. A further seven years have passed, and we are still talking about the implementation of the basic principles. For that reason, I believe that the Committee of Ministers should be requested by this Assembly to report on the implementation of Recommendation (96)5.

At the centre of this issue is the principle of non-discrimination, which is, as it should be, the focus of our debates and of the resolution. We must consider the wider implications of work-life imbalance and the policies that perpetuate it, including the gender pay gap, the type of work women are doing, representation of women in public life and career discrimination on the basis of having children and taking time out of the workplace. An OECD report last December on the gender pay gap found that “everywhere women are doing more unpaid work than men”. Colleagues, this must change.

The Assembly must use strong anti-discrimination language and include specific reference to the rights of women, as it has been doing, but governments and State agencies must lead by example. For this reason, we must demand improved awareness of and education on shared responsibilities between men and women, and call on member States to ensure that their laws and policies are not explicitly or implicitly promoting stereotypical attitudes towards women.

Finally, we must continue to insist on concrete measures designed to achieve equal representation of women in Parliament – it was good hearing from our colleague from Azerbaijan indicating that this was happening – and at all grades of the civil and public services, academia and State boards, and encourage the improved representation of women at managerial and board level in the private sector. These wider measures are critical to the genuine reconciliation that we seek. Ireland recently enacted an amendment to our political funding laws incentivising political parties to ensure that at least 30% of their candidates at general elections are female. More such measures are needed to redress the shockingly low percentage of women in Parliament – as we know, it averages 20% across Europe and just 15% in Ireland.

THE PRESIDENT – Thank you. I call Ms Turmel, Observer from Canada.

Ms TURMEL (Canada)* – I am delighted to speak on gender equality and to welcome the rapporteur’s approach to achieving it. The choice of the word “reconciliation” is important, because it implies that we are trying to strike a balance.

I fully support the recommendations in the report, because they can serve as a point of reference for countries seeking to amend their legislation, as well as for policies to encourage increased female participation in the labour market and ensure that as many men and women as possible reconcile family and professional life. Among OECD countries and wealthy countries that have adopted laws to resolve the problem of the wage gap, one might cite Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany, which are in third and fourth places in the list of countries that have wage gaps over 20%. The wage gap reflects a deep and systemic problem, which is not necessarily linked to discrimination. One of the main factors behind the wage gap is the thorny problem of reconciling work and family life, as outlined by the rapporteur, and the difficult choices that women are forced to make as the main carers in their families. The choices that women make are often to the detriment of their careers. What is more, we continue to underestimate women’s skills and the work they do. Studies by economists show that inequality between men and women is largely attributable to women’s role in the household. Their responsibilities in the home limit the number of hours that they can be in paid work, and their mobility. Such responsibilities often lead to breaks in women’s careers, and their employment possibilities can be very limited because they have to be available for their families. That is why in seeking to eliminate inequality between the sexes we have to look at the role men play in the family.

Parliamentarians have a role to play in doing away with such inequality. We can sponsor Bills in the commercial or manpower sectors that contain provisions that cater for women’s needs. We must also understand that legislation that appears, at first sight, to be neutral regarding gender equality might have different repercussions for men and for women. When we scrutinise legislation, we must table amendments to try to resolve the problem of gender inequality. In our own parliaments, we can also ensure that our procedures take account of the needs of women parliamentarians. When they give birth, for example, they must be given enough time to spend with their children but they must be empowered to play a full part in parliamentary work. In some parliaments, punitive attendance rules should be reconsidered. Another way to help women would be proxy voting, or alternates who shared parliamentary responsibilities. Once again, I thank the rapporteur for an excellent job of work.

      THE PRESIDENT – Thank you, Ms Turmel. I call Ms Djurović.

      Ms DJUROVIĆ (Serbia) – Bringing work and family into balance is an issue that concerns women much more than men. Women spend less time in well-paid jobs, and are twice as likely to work in unpaid jobs. They face many responsibilities and obligations that impede their participation in professional and political life and greatly affect their unemployment rate, the birth rate and their position in the labour market.

There is still a huge gap between men and women as concerns household duties and the care of children, elderly and ill people in the family. Women still have the greatest part of the responsibility for all those duties. Women also earn less than men – the income gap in Serbia amounts to 16% – and there is a larger difference in the rate of unemployment between men and women. The average difference over ten years totals 17.2%. The more children there are in a family, the lower the rate of women’s employment. Encouraging fathers to use their right to parental leave would enable women better to balance their professional and private duties and change the attitude that child care is women’s work.

The system of flexible working hours is poorly developed in Serbia. The percentage of people who use some form of part-time work, or who work half-time, is small. When we talk about policies to reconcile family and work, and the measures that employers can implement, one is certainly adjusting work hours to allow for family responsibilities. Recommendations for the development of measures promoting the possibility of reconciling private with professional and public life should be directed to increasing the participation of women in the labour market and to the improvement of local services. Certainly, it is not enough to set up a service; the approach is also important. It is necessary to inform the public about the availability of the service. Informing people of their rights would contribute to a better balance between private life and professional and public life.

From the political perspective, gender equality is one of the priorities of internal reforms in Serbia on the path to European Union integration. However, Serbia has scarce budgetary resources allocated for social policy, which is also intended to provide an incentive to economic gender equality. It is, therefore, crucial to strengthen co-operation with relevant international organisations, and especially with the Council of Europe, to highlight gender equality and provide the resources for affirmative action aimed at supporting women in that regard. Such action includes training, further education, funding for business start-up projects, legal assistance and special credit facilities for women entrepreneurs.

Finally, I point out that, for the first time in its history, the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia has 33% female members of parliament, and the delegation of the Republic of Serbia in the Council of Europe is more than 50% women. That is the best index that things are changing for the better on the issue of gender equality.

THE PRESIDENT – Congratulations. Mr Yatim is not here, so we have time for one or two more speeches. Does anyone in the Chamber wish to speak on this topic? That is not the case.

      I call Ms Quintanilla, rapporteur, to reply. You have five minutes remaining.

      Ms QUINTANILLA (Spain)* – I thank all of you, because you have shown such commitment in this debate. You have addressed the issue of what equality means. We are privileged women, and we must appeal to our parliaments and governments to ensure that the millions of women who make up the Council of Europe member States know that we are working for them. Reconciling family and professional life appears to many women to be a utopian dream. You have got women cleaning offices. You have got women in rural areas rising at dawn to help their husbands in the farms. You have got women in all our countries who, day in, day out, try to juggle their work in the home and their work outside the home. That is why we need to make sure we put in place the legislation they need to protect them. The watchword here is reconciliation, as well as responsibility, because we are talking about one of the major challenges ahead in the 21st century. That is why my report quite clearly says that reconciliation is not only a huge economic resource, particularly in a time of crisis in many Council of Europe member States, but also a real resource.

If we really do manage to strike this work-life balance and roll out the good examples and best practice that we already have in many Spanish companies, we will overcome this economic crisis. We will make sure that many more people, particularly women, are guaranteed social well-being, not social exclusion. That is why I am so grateful to all of you. I am indebted to you for your statements and kind words of support for the report. That helps move us towards eliminating the inequality so many women experience on a daily basis. Many women are still forced to choose between working and looking after their family; if they choose to have a family, they have to forget any career or professional life.

      In this debate, we have highlighted the value of reconciliation. You have all enriched the debate, and I am very grateful to all of you. We are raising the voice of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and taking a further step on the road to equality between men and women. That also leads to increased happiness for men and women. Reconciliation and shared responsibility will lead to equality, and we must also strive to eliminate inequality in order to make sure men are happier in the home and at work.

If we succeed in our aims, we will also boost our economies and improve society across the board. I am grateful to the chair of the committee and also the secretariat, which helped me greatly in producing the report. We need to talk about justice for women in the Council of Europe, and about justice for men and women in all our member States.

THE PRESIDENT – Thank you for your excellent speech and report. I thank everyone who contributed to the debate for their excellent speeches, too.

I call Ms Acketoft, chairperson of the committee.

      Ms ACKETOFT (Sweden) – I thank our rapporteur for this excellent report, and I thank our secretariat, whose members are sitting behind us. This is a good report not least because it takes into account that no countries have achieved gender equality yet, and we are all at different levels in the process. Some of us need to pass some serious legislation, while others have gone beyond that stage but now need to implement their serious legislation. We must also realise that some solutions might fit perfectly well for one community or nation, but might not be the solution for another. Such diversity is fine, so long as there is consistent progress towards a gender-equal society where people have equal possibilities irrespective of whether we have one or two X or Y chromosomes.

Our politicians must have a vision of what society should look like, and sometimes we must lead and make tough decisions, because change will follow. Some countries are ahead of others in terms of gender equality. In my case, I am ahead because of the generations before me who had a vision and constantly fought for it, and I now keep up that battle.

      Having access to a decent income is fundamental for freedom. A woman who has to depend on a man for money is never free. I always recommend to my younger colleagues that they should have a “bugger off” fund. That is money that makes her free – that makes her a free person to say and go and do whatever she wants. To achieve our goal of decent incomes, we need some legislation. We need shared parental leave so men and women share the responsibility, and we need the right to good and affordable child care. We also need anti-discrimination laws, and equal jobs and equal pay. Most important of all, however, are the decisions made in the morning at family breakfast tables, when people have to decide who will stay at home with the child who has the flu. If they have equal income and have already shared parental leave, the likelihood is that that caring role will be shared equally.

      Thank you very much for this good report. I think we are a good step ahead now.

THE PRESIDENT – I agree: the battle goes on.

The debate is closed.

I understand that the chairperson of the committee wishes to propose to the Assembly that Amendment 1, which was unanimously approved by the committee, should be declared as agreed by the Assembly under Rule 33.11.

Is that so Ms Acketoft?

Ms ACKETOFT (Sweden) – That is correct.

THE PRESIDENT – Does anyone object?

      The following amendment has been adopted:

Amendment 1, tabled by Ms Carmen Quintanilla, Ms Lydia Mutsch, Ms Marie-Jo Zimmermann, Ms Bernadette Bourzai, Ms Gisela Wurm, Ms Sahiba Gafarova, Mr David Davies and Ms Riitta Myller, which is, in the draft resolution, after paragraph 8.3, insert the following paragraph: “respect the right of fathers to enjoy shared responsibility by ensuring that family law foresees, in case of separation and divorce, the possibility of joint custody of children, for their benefit, based on mutual agreement and never imposed;”.

      We will now proceed to vote on the whole of the draft resolution contained in Document 13080, as amended.

      The vote is open

      Ms QUINTANILLA (Spain) – The voting system is not working.

THE PRESIDENT – There is a problem with the voting system. We will add the vote of Ms Quintanilla manually later on.

I call Lord Tomlinson on a point of order.

Lord TOMLINSON (United Kingdom) – I have sat through the whole debate, apart from two speeches, but I did not raise as a point of order the fact that my card was not working because the rapporteur had said that hers was not working. If you can add the rapporteur’s vote, I hope that you will add mine as well.

The PRESIDENT – Of course we will do the same for you, Lord Tomlinson.

(Mr Mignon, President of the Assembly, took the Chair in place of Ms Wurm.)

4. Trafficking of migrant workers for forced labour

The PRESIDENT* – The next item of business this morning is the debate on the report entitled “Trafficking of migrant workers for forced labour”, Document 13086, to be presented by Ms Annette Groth, on behalf of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons, with an opinion presented by Ms Pirkko Mattila, on behalf of the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination, Document 13108.

I remind members that speaking times in this morning’s debate are limited to four minutes. We must finish by 12.55 p.m., including the vote, in order to pay tribute to those who have been the most assiduous and have voted the most. At 12.45 p.m. we will move to the reply and the vote. Is that agreed to?

It is agreed to.

I call Ms Groth, the rapporteur. You have 13 minutes in total which you may divide as suits you between the presentation of the report and the reply to the various speakers.

Ms GROTH (Germany)* – It is a shame that this important topic is being dealt with as the last item on our agenda because, as a result, we do not have that many members in the Chamber, although that is of course understandable.

It should be clearly stated that human trafficking is modern-day slavery. It is one of the biggest and most profitable industries worldwide. One of the figures in the documents is that $32 billion is generated by trafficking. Recently I talked to someone from Europol in Greece, who said that the profits generated from worldwide drug trafficking are $50 billion and that the profits generated from human trafficking could be a similar sum. It is clear in any event that human trafficking goes hand in hand with drug trafficking and often with arms trafficking. It is a big issue in the context of organised crime, which is perhaps one reason why the number of cases that are brought to light is very low. Given the mafia structures that are involved in labour trafficking – it is a jungle of organised crime – and the dangers associated with that, it is difficult to bring cases to light.

The International Labour Organisation has published figures showing that almost 21 million people worldwide are victims of forced labour. I am talking about human trafficking for the purposes of labour exploitation and not sexual exploitation, which is another subject, although it is of course intimately bound up with labour trafficking. However, my report concentrates on trafficking workers for forced labour. Of those 21 million people, which is a huge figure, at least 44% are victims of trafficking. Women and young girls are over-represented, which ties in with the debate that we have just had and yesterday’s debate. A minimum of 55% of the victims of labour trafficking are women and young girls. We find forced labour in virtually all sectors. One of the biggest is the agricultural sector, but the construction, tourism, hotel and catering sectors are all involved.

We had a public hearing on this subject in the Bundestag last year. A well-known German nun, who a few years ago founded an organisation to combat forced labour – it concentrated on prostitution, but its remit was enlarged to include forced labour – said that we are punishing the victims, who are often criminalised because they are irregular migrants. As soon as it is discovered that they do not have the necessary documentation, they are expelled. As Sister Ackermann has said, we are rewarding the perpetrators, who very often get off scot free or, if they are prosecuted at all, are sentenced to short prison terms. We therefore have the wrong emphasis: we should criminalise not the victims but the perpetrators.

Interestingly, we have to rely on figures from the US State Department, as Europe is apparently dragging its heels in that respect. According to the State Department’s 2011 report, 41 210 victims of labour trafficking have been identified worldwide, and there are thought to be almost 11 000 victims in Europe alone. There were 7 200 prosecutions, but only 4 200 perpetrators were charged and sentenced for human trafficking.

The report has several facets, but I will concentrate on where there are examples of good practice. It is wonderful what Romania is doing in this area, as one of the countries that is most affected by the phenomenon. One of the biggest groups of victims of trafficking is the Roma, something that we are forced to note. Romania has set up the National Anti-Human Trafficking Agency, and has published what are virtually guidelines on the kind of measures that need to be adopted to combat such trafficking. Remarkably, in 2011, more than 1 200 events were organised to raise awareness, explain what is happening and alert the public, the police and the authorities to the phenomenon.

The International Trade Union Confederation has recently published “How to combat forced labour and trafficking”, which lists best practices. Much more might be said on that, but we, as parliamentarians, must take up the issue more robustly and be more active, because huge profits are generated from what is a big business. In talking about good practice, I also want to pick out Belgium and Italy, which, unlike such countries as Germany, provide victims of forced labour with residence permits of limited duration, so that they have time to bring a prosecution against the perpetrators. In my country, such people would often be expelled after about six weeks. They have suffered trauma – they are forced into difficult or hazardous work and are often assaulted – so we should give them the wherewithal to enable them to bring prosecutions, rather than simply accuse them of having crossed a border illegally. We have to make sources of funding available for training labour inspectorates and police forces, so that they can be in a position to assist victims, to detect forced labour structures, to tackle the issues and to bring the necessary prosecutions.

      Finally I want to mention the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. It is important that all countries ratify that convention, because not all have done so and some may be unaware of its existence. In addition, migration legislation must be reviewed to see whether we can make changes to protect the victims of human trafficking and allow them the opportunity to bring prosecutions.

      THE PRESIDENT* – Thank you, Ms Groth. You have four minutes left for your reply.

      I call Ms Mattila to present the opinion of the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination. You have four minutes.

      Ms MATTILA (Finland) – It is a privilege to address you and, as a rapporteur, to give my opinion on this timely and topical report. I congratulate Ms Groth on an excellent report that sets out, in a well-structured and comprehensive manner, the problem of the trafficking of migrant workers for forced labour. We may be last – but not least.

      Trafficking in human beings is a serious violation of human rights, and victims are often the most vulnerable people in our societies. The problem has long been discussed solely in the context of prostitution, and only recently have we started to recognise that the scope of human trafficking is much larger. Victims may very well be the person who cleans our offices, minds our children or builds our houses. Even if the phenomenon involves many shady elements, it is not at all unusual for victims to work among us in respectable businesses. That makes it problematic to identify victims, and I therefore agree with the rapporteur that we should focus on the protection of victims and the prosecution of offenders, while striving to prevent trafficking altogether.

      We must acknowledge the vulnerability of some specific groups of victims. According to International Labour Organization statistics, 55% of victims of forced labour are women or girls, most of whom are exploited for sexual purposes. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are also affected, because social exclusion and rejection from the family can increase their vulnerability. People with disabilities and immigrants run the risk of becoming marginalised, and are therefore easy targets for traffickers. We must also recognise that there are male victims of trafficking. Most of the support systems were designed for women, which has left men without safe shelters. We must remember that being gender-sensitive also involves taking into account male victims.

      The trafficking of migrants for forced labour does not relate only to immigration and labour. Not all victims are from abroad, and many traffickers exploit people in their countries of residence. In one case in my own country of Finland, a Finn was convicted for trafficking two victims, who were both also Finns. That example shows that, as well as international legal instruments and co-operation, we need internal co-operation within national authorities. Neither do all cases of the exploitation of workers involve trafficking. It is therefore important to prosecute offenders under the appropriate legal provisions, so that we can develop legal practices against trafficking.

Parliaments play an important role in developing and implementing law and monitoring implementation. I remind colleagues of the Paris Declaration adopted in 2010 at the “Parliaments united against trafficking” Conference. It includes a recommendation to member states to appoint national co-ordinators on human trafficking. Finland’s experience with a national co-ordinator has been only positive, and I urge all member States, through their representatives here, to appoint one.

We cannot tackle the problem without fighting economic crime. The grey economy is a breeding ground for the exploitation of forced labour. We must educate tax authorities and labour organisations to be aware of the risk related to trafficking. Ultimately, it is a question of money: if we make it more difficult for traffickers to make money through this abuse, we are one step closer to eliminating the problem. I look forward to a fruitful debate.

THE PRESIDENT* – Thank you, Ms Mattila. You will have a little time to reply at the end of the debate.

I call Mr Kox to speak on behalf of the Group of the Unified European Left.

Mr KOX (Netherlands) – Almost everywhere outside this building, we see advertisements for Steven Spielberg’s new movie, “Lincoln”. This film about Lincoln’s struggle to abolish slavery in the United States, has been, and will be, given all kinds of awards. We will all see the movie, but while it is about history, Annette’s report is about the here and now.

As Annette describes in her report, forced labour – modern slavery – is everywhere: in agriculture, the textiles industry, manufacturing, and perhaps even in our hotels. We know about it, but we let it happen. We can fight it, but we all allow this booming business. It is a crime from which a lot of money – not tens of millions, but billions, as the rapporteur said – can be made from exploiting people not just in other parts of the world but here in Council of Europe member States.

Although there is nothing wrong in this report being debated last on Friday, we need a follow-up report, once the Committee of Ministers has commented on the draft recommendation, which should be debated in prime time in this Assembly. One cannot imagine a more horrible violation of human rights than slavery.

The Council of Europe has conventions on this matter, so we can do something about it. Those countries that have not signed and ratified those conventions should do so. We have a mechanism to monitor how governments are living up to their obligations, and we can then consider how to improve our conventions. The Council of Europe should never accept forced labour. We must make every effort to end modern slavery. Although it is good that we will watch a movie about what happened 150 years ago in the United States, all of us in Europe should note Annette Groth’s report. We must not ignore the violation of human rights that is still taking place. My group will ask for a follow-up report, because this issue must be at the top of our agenda. I thank Annette for the great work that she has done.

THE PRESIDENT* – Thank you, Mr Kox.

I call Mr Schneider to speak on behalf of the Group of the European People’s Party.

Mr SCHNEIDER (France)* – Slavery was abolished long ago, yet it is still with us, even in our own countries. These modern slaves are a work force deprived of any voice, defenceless, and eminently exploitable. Every day, poverty drives men, women and even children into the iron grip of those who are prepared to exploit them ruthlessly. As the French Committee against Modern Slavery says, slaves of debt bondage, victims of modern slave drivers and illegal immigrants trapped in the trafficking world suffer appalling treatment, which is related not to the colour of their skin or ethnic origin but to their vulnerability, which puts them in the total control of one person.

The rapporteur is right to say that exploited migrant workers should be considered not as criminals but as victims, often of organised crime syndicates. However, I took part in the French National Assembly’s fact-finding mission on modern slavery, which found that trafficking was difficult to stamp out, as it is carried out not just by organised crime syndicates but by individuals. The Committee against Modern Slavery pointed out that in France, 82% of victims of domestic slavery come from African countries and 75% were recruited directly by their employer. Generally, women do the recruiting through family networks, while the more wealthy employers tend to recruit through agencies. Unfortunately, about a third of such victims are minors.

At a meeting in Bucharest, experts stressed the need to protect and help victims to allow them to testify against exploitative employers and therefore secure convictions. Whether individuals or companies, such employers should no longer be able to count on impunity. Every country needs an appropriate legislative framework, as the report rightly says, which should apply to all employers. One problem is employers who are protected by their diplomatic status.

We must take into account European Court of Human Rights judgments. The October 2012 judgment showed us that even in France, the home country of human rights, modern slavery is a reality. My country has not adopted a precise enough definition of crimes of servitude and forced labour, making it harder for us to prevent such crimes, protect the victims and prosecute the perpetrators. Members of parliament and of this Assembly in particular, must press our governments and parliaments to resolve these legal questions.

As the report says, international co-operation is needed. Many networks have been set up for legal and police co-operation in Europe. However, as slavery often starts not as people arrive in our countries, but at a very young age in the country of origin, we need to act earlier. Information campaigns are important, but not enough, given the poverty and despair that is suffered in such countries. Encouraging children to attend school is important for them and their families.

How can we even bear to talk these days about forced labour and trafficking in human beings? Modern slavery is a terrible attack on human dignity. In 1948, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights proclaimed that no one shall be kept in slavery or servitude, and prohibited slavery and slave trading in all its forms. Sixty-five years later, we should ensure that that ideal becomes a reality for all of us, so I shall vote in favour of the report with great conviction.

      THE PRESIDENT* – Thank you, Mr Schneider. I call Mr Schennach to speak on behalf of the Socialist Group.

      Mr SCHENNACH (Austria)* – Our warm thanks go to the rapporteur for this report. She used the word “pandemic” to discuss human trafficking. This modern-day form of slavery is indeed on the rise, along the lines of a pandemic.

      In 1888, Brazil signed the convention against slavery. Now, in 2013, we have to realise that 20 million people throughout the world are being held in conditions of servitude. That is staggering and horrifying. It is appalling to think that behind all the figures is a smooth-functioning network, largely controlled by organised crime, which always has a stake in the game. Our Finnish colleague was right to say that it is not only women and children, but men who are trafficked.

Organised crime will stop at nothing in this modern-day form of slavery. For example, there are organised forms of begging, which involve a trade in children. When talking about slavery or servitude, we must remember that in Finland, as elsewhere, there were auctions in which slaves were essentially sold at market. That may have been the case in the past, but the situation is no different today. Children are still sold on the market. Sometimes they are mutilated to achieve a better price at auction. Slaves are being sold off at auction in Vienna, Sarajevo and Tirana. Essentially, the organised criminals move around and use a relay system in which the slaves are passed on. In that way, the organised criminals achieve greater profits.

We have talked about best practice in relation to women who are forced to work in the sex industry. I want to single out the United Kingdom in that regard. Unlike in Germany or Austria, where there are hundreds of trials each year for slavery, it is a rising trend in the United Kingdom that the victims are deported because the perpetrators have taken their passports and papers off them. When a case goes to trial, the perpetrators get off scot free because the victims are no longer in the country. The United Kingdom has to realise that many of the slaves who are auctioned are trafficked to the United Kingdom. If those women are freed, they need to be allowed to take on a new identity and remain in the country, because that is the right way to tackle this phenomenon and protect the victims. We have to realise that that is the situation. That is why this report is so important.

Diplomats – servants of the State – often keep their domestic servants in conditions of slavery.

I hope that the report finds widespread support. Tiny Kox has said that follow-up reports will be needed.

      THE PRESIDENT* – Thank you, Mr Schennach. I call Mr Chikovani to speak on behalf of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.

      Mr CHIKOVANI (Georgia) – I too thank Ms Groth for her fascinating report. It gives us an opportunity to look again at this modern-day crime that unites many different crimes, from prohibiting someone’s right to be independent and move around freely, to economic crimes and corruption. This is a grey area, because we do not know what we are dealing with. As indicated in the report, there are no concrete and precise data to provide a picture of what we are up against. Just going by the information that we have at hand, we can judge that it is an important issue that we all need to tackle together.

      As the report indicates, this is a complex crime. It can be broken into three phases: recruitment, transportation and exploitation. We need to address all three phases separately. On recruitment, we must ensure that there is an awareness programme that targets vulnerable parts of society in each and every country. On transportation, we must ensure that our law enforcement agencies are up to date with the best methods of control. Thirdly, on exploitation, we must ensure that when cases are revealed, the criminals are penalised in a manner that makes trafficking no longer a profitable business.

      The rapporteur talked about best practices and the tools that are already at hand. However, a number of countries that are represented in this room still do not use the available tools to the maximum possible extent, including the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. When we go home, we should all call on our national governments to utilise that tool to its fullest extent.

      As indicated in the report and stated by experts in this field, there is a lack of transnational co-operation on this issue. We must all realise that dealing with this problem is not only a national obligation, but our joint obligation. We have to put in place an international mechanism that enables all governments to interact to provide the necessary tools.

I join colleagues in calling for the continued attention of the Council of Europe on this matter. Further reports are needed on what progress is made and what further mechanisms we could introduce to tackle this problem more successfully. We should also call on the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings to provide better guidance on specific measures to discourage this crime.

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe supports the report and I thank the rapporteur, once again, for her work on this important issue.

      THE PRESIDENT* – Thank you, Mr Chikovani. The rapporteur wishes to respond at the end of the debate, so I call Ms Erkal Kara.

      Ms ERKAL KARA (Turkey)* – I congratulate Ms Groth on her excellent report, which encourages us all to take action. Unfortunately, human trafficking is still coming to the fore in Europe. It is one of the most heinous violations of human rights. Stamping out human trafficking should be a high priority for all member States, especially given that there are more than 9 million victims throughout the world, most of whom are women and children.

      Over the past few years, Turkey has become energetically involved in combating human trafficking and has introduced a series of measures. A hotline for victims was set up in 2005. Legal and health services and psychological counselling are now available to victims, who are issued with short-term visas. Effective assistance is also provided to illegal immigrants so that they do not become victims of trafficking again. The organisation of aid to victims of trafficking and further planning are carried out in close co-operation with voluntary organisations. Turkey has also passed legislative measures to stamp out organisations that exploit illegal workers. Article 79 of the Turkish criminal code was modified on 25 July 2010 to protect victims by criminalising attempts to smuggle migrants.

      I underline the importance of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, which lays down a legal framework and defines standards. It is up to members of parliament to ensure that governments sign it and that parliaments ratify it and scrutinise its enforcement. Turkey is one of the signatories and, with a view to finalising ratification, it is now bringing its national legislation into line with the provisions in the convention. I hope that the process will be completed very soon.

THE PRESIDENT* – Thank you. I call Mr Connarty.

      Mr CONNARTY (United Kingdom) – I rise as the Labour vice-chair of the United Kingdom group against human trafficking and a United Kingdom member of the European Union-wide group Parliamentarians Against Human Trafficking. I refer colleagues to a three-hour debate on human trafficking in the House of Commons on 20 December 2012. They might find it enlightening.

      More people are in slavery now than were ever trafficked from Africa in the slave trade of the 17th and 18th centuries. Can there be a more obvious and degrading negation of human rights than to be forced or tricked into leaving one’s home country, town or district and coerced or threatened into working excessive hours in often unsafe and unhealthy conditions? That is the reality of trafficking. The worst cases resemble one reported recently in which trafficked women garment workers who had been locked inside a factory in Bangladesh burned to death in a fire. Some might say that that is outside the remit of a pan-European organisation such as the Council of Europe, but sadly, most consumers fail to ask under what conditions the garment workers are employed who make the elegant dresses, the smart gents’ suits or the shirts we buy in shops and boutiques in Europe.

      We must be concerned about the 20.9 million people referred to in the report who are trapped in modern-day slavery; I am glad that the rapporteur used that term. It is not just the 9.1 million victims of human trafficking mentioned in the report. I understand the link and applaud the initiative of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons, but the root of the problem is that humans are being degraded and treated as resources or dehumanised inputs into a production process. The cost of using humans is being reduced to the lowest level, and they are being trapped into modern-day slavery.

      How should we fight modern-day slavery? We in the United Kingdom have an anti-slavery day to commemorate the work of William Wilberforce, who thought that he had abolished slavery in the world 200 years ago. In fact, it is back in a new form. Every country should have an anti-slavery day, just like Holocaust day, to remind us what happens in the name of commerce.

We should recognise that trafficking is not only a cross-border migration crime; trafficking across regions is recorded in every country. Many cases have been recorded by the Serious Organised Crime Agency’s Human Trafficking Centre in Birmingham. A slave camp was found recently in leafy Bedfordshire. They thought it was a Gypsy camp, but found out after 15 years that British slaves were being kept in that camp and treated abominably while they went around monoblocking the pavements of fancy houses in the county.

I suggest we set up and properly resource a gangmasters licensing authority in every country, as we have done in the United Kingdom, to deal with enslaved agriculture, construction and garment workers. We should support Amendment 2, which, in line with the convention, calls for an independent rapporteur or ombudsman in every country, ring-fenced to prevent the office from being influenced by governments or parties. We should join Parliamentarians Against Human Trafficking; people can contact us at [email protected]. We welcome every country to join. Some 56% of illegal immigrants recorded in the European Union enter through Turkey, for instance. Sadly, Germany and France have not yet joined the campaign, as if there were no trafficking in their countries.

Finally, we should call on business to audit supply chains, as is being done in California. Today, Apple reported that it had done 359 audits and admitted that child labour was used in the production of the fancy technical goods we all use. We should involve business to eradicate slavery from the supply chain. Ask as consumers whether a product involves any form of slavery. If so, do not buy the product.

THE PRESIDENT* – Thank you, Mr Connarty. I call Ms Turmel, Observer from Canada.

Ms TURMEL (Canada)* – I am pleased to represent Canada and participate in this debate. Trafficking and forced labour are affronts to human dignity. In its report, the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons has pinpointed the causes, what is at stake and the responses necessary if we are to fight this form of modern slavery effectively. As parliamentarians, we all have a duty to ensure that the report’s recommendations are enacted in our respective countries. Those who reduce victims of trafficking, who are mostly women, to slavery must know that we are united and determined in the battle that we are waging against them. Otherwise, they might well prosper.

Today, all countries around the world are affected, including Canada. Each year, between 1 500 and 2 200 people are trafficked from Canada into the United States. The Canadian Government has introduced a series of measures to make it easier to tackle this form of crime, but the mechanisms to protect victims fall short of what is needed. We still do not have a system that enables us to recognise victims quickly or give them victim status. Access to health care is also too difficult for people who have already suffered a great deal.

On the legal plane, the Conservative government has experienced a certain number of setbacks. The supreme court of the province of British Columbia has ruled that much of the recently adopted Conservative legislation on immigration and refugees contravenes Canada’s charter of rights and freedoms, and that it could lead to prosecutions against humanitarian workers, for example. I recognise that that is a specifically Canadian concern, but it reminds us of something important: in our desire to fight trafficking and forced labour, we must distinguish between acting quickly and acting precipitately. In Canada, the adoption of legislation led to the suspension of a trial involving four people accused of the kinds of crime that we are discussing.

We must step up our co-operation and exchange information, and we need greater rigour in framing legislation that will enable our different countries to fight the trafficking of workers effectively. Thank you for your attention and for an excellent report.

THE PRESIDENT* – Thank you. I call Ms Carlino.

Ms CARLINO (Italy)* – Human trafficking is the third most profitable international activity after trafficking in drugs and arms. Government policy tends to focus more on human trafficking for sexual purposes, but it has emerged that smuggling and trafficking people in order to exploit their labour is an increasing global phenomenon involving every country, although perhaps in different ways. There are States of origin, States of transit and States of final destination.

Exploitation of labour mainly concerns migrants from other continents, but it can also involve citizens from the European Union, particularly those from the newer member States. Forced labour as a phenomenon has been underestimated and has not been tackled energetically enough, although fortunately States are becoming more aware of the seriousness of the problem.

      One explanation for that lack of awareness is that, apart from extreme versions, where victims are subject to drastic deprivation of their liberty and probably to violence, labour exploitation is more clandestine and happens in circumstances that make it difficult for the authorities to identify it. Unlike sexual exploitation, it is difficult to understand how degrading general labour exploitation can be. There are alarming estimates of its extent. Every day, it is said that millions of people, including many minors, are being exploited in this way.

      Labour exploitation takes many forms, including forced begging and forcing people to commit crimes such as bag-snatching, theft and pickpocketing. According to the International Labour Organisation, at least 2.9 million people around the world are the victims of trafficking. Women and girls are most likely to be victims, and 90% of victims are exploited in the private sector. The figures are even more worrying if we consider that it is rare for the traffickers and the final users of those trafficked to be brought to book. Convictions are very rare. Trafficking exploits the vulnerability and misery of migrants, and an absence of State investment means that it is very difficult to prevent it.

It is important for States to take action against these crimes because those exploited must be seen as victims, not people who are breaking immigration and labour laws. Member States need to look again at their policies on migration, remembering that those who are trafficked are victims and should not be punished for violating immigration laws. Italy is particularly sensitive to the problem, and in 2011 introduced new laws to penalise those responsible for labour exploitation and to protect the victims.

Given the gravity of the matter, I am keen to vote in favour of the report, and I thank Ms Groth for her excellent work.

      THE PRESIDENT* – Thank you. I call Mr Shipley, Observer from Canada.

      Mr SHIPLEY (Canada) - I speak today on a problem that appears to have reached pandemic proportions. As others have said, human trafficking can properly be called a modern-day form of slavery. Its scope is staggering: more than 20 million people worldwide are trapped in forced labour, of whom 44%, or 9 million, are victims of trafficking. The global profits derived from human trafficking are estimated by the International Labour Organisation to approach the levels seen in drug trafficking: up to $30 billion a year.

      Unfortunately, in Canada, we are not immune from the scourge of human trafficking. Victims of trafficking in Canada are not exclusively foreign nationals; they are Canadian aboriginal women, youths and children, teenaged runaways and children under the care of government authorities. All are particularly vulnerable to domestic trafficking. In Canada, it is known that there is questionable involvement by third-party agencies in the hiring of legally recruited foreign workers. Those workers have entered Canada by various legal means, including through the temporary foreign worker programme, to meet temporary labour needs in particular occupations and industries. Once they are legally in Canada, these workers may then be exploited through forced labour.

      In June 2012, Canada launched a national action plan to combat human trafficking, to build on its ongoing commitments to deal with the problem. The national action plan has a particular focus on protecting vulnerable foreign nationals, prevention and detection of human trafficking at an early stage, and the careful scrutiny of employers using the improved temporary foreign worker programme. The national action plan enhances our already strong criminal sanctions for trafficking in persons.

      A significant case involving trafficking for the purpose of forced labour in Canada recently concluded with the convictions of 19 individuals of a criminal organisation that transported a group of 23 Hungarian men, offering them the hope of improving their lives and those of their families through meaningful employment. Instead, they were forced to work for their traffickers in the construction industry. They were also forced into making false claims for government social benefits and turning the proceeds of that fraud over to their traffickers. Another example involved 60 male victims of trafficking from Poland who were lured to Canada with the prospect of learning welding and English. No training was ever offered, and they were forced to work as welders for companies owned by the traffickers, for little pay.

      As we know, the trafficking of workers is not restricted to males. In Canada it is widely acknowledged that women and children are the principal victims, primarily for sexual exploitation but also for forced labour. We encourage the Council of Europe and all nations to be steadfast in the efforts to combat this insidious problem.

THE PRESIDENT* – Thank you. I call Ms Boutin-Sweet, Observer from Canada.

      Ms BOUTIN-SWEET (Canada)* – I am delighted to take part in this debate to raise an issue about which we do not talk enough when we discuss human trafficking. I shall speak about obstacles to immigration and the integration of immigrants that are imposed by governments in countries that are favoured destinations, including my own.

To combat trafficking in people, we have to go back to the root cause of the problem: the distances that workers around the world are prepared to travel in order to find a steady job with a wage that guarantees a decent standard of living. In spite of a need for manpower in a number of our economies, governments continue to put in place huge obstacles that workers have to surmount before they can find a steady job. The result is that workers become prepared to put their lives in danger and to spend considerable sums, often spending several years working just to reimburse their traffickers.

In my country, we have strict conditions for some categories of workers, such as temporary workers, which limit their financial freedom and freedom of movement. First, Canada makes it possible for workers to enter the country for short periods and to work in certain economic sectors. Visas are then granted for variable periods, and in some cases workers may be eligible for permanent resident status, depending on the job that they do. In agriculture, visas are valid for only eight months and for a certain job in the care of a designated employer. There are special assistance programmes for children and young people. Special carers’ visas are available for three years and three months, and if carers switch families, they have to reapply for a permit. Our immigration laws provide that a carer may apply for permanent residency once they have worked for 24 out of 36 months. Large numbers of workers enter under these programmes: in 2011, more than 190 000 people arrived in Canada to take up temporary jobs, and in 2006, the figure was 112 000. Let us compare those figures with the number of people who come into Canada via normal channels: in 2011, 248 000 foreigners were admitted to Canada, which was 5% down on the figure for 2005.

      The experience of immigrants in trying to get a better life should remind us that we need to tackle human trafficking by allowing migrants to participate fully in the economic life of our country by eliminating obstacles to their integration.

THE PRESIDENT – Thank you. I call Ms Blanco.

Ms BLANCO (Spain)* – First, I thank our two rapporteurs for dealing with a particularly important subject. They have given us a few figures, most of which we are already aware of – at least, those of us who have dealt with this subject. They mentioned the 55%. We are talking about 800 000 out of the total of 2 million people who are trafficked being women, and 90% of these are women who are forced into prostitution. That is the main feature of the business of trafficking in women and children. The vast majority are forced into the sex trade in our countries.

It is difficult to combat human trafficking if legislation is not harmonised in the countries that comprise the Council of Europe. In international bodies, such as this Organisation or the European Parliament, we have to work hard to see to it that our legislation is harmonised, otherwise we confront a paradoxical situation. The United Kingdom has enacted legislation on trafficking and now provides witness protection for the victims of trafficking, and the same is true for Spain.

Trafficking networks tend not to collapse, because as a rule they are not only involved in human trafficking, but in arms and drug trafficking, so all three phenomena have to be tackled. Once a witness complains and enters the witness protection programme, what happens is as follows. Legal proceedings tend to drag on and the women, living in the societies in which they have made complaints, then find themselves dragged down by their traffickers. That is the problem.

We should harmonise our laws, because although our borders are closed down, paradoxically they seem to be porous for traffickers.

THE PRESIDENT – I thank all who took part in this important debate. We had an excellent report, and I now call the rapporteur to reply to the speakers in the debate. Since the chair of the committee is not here and would have had two minutes, she has six whole minutes.

Ms GROTH (Germany) – Thank you for those six minutes, President.

Ms Blanco is right to say that a key problem is to do with harmonisation of laws and legislation. If there is a good, established witness protection programme under which a victim can be confident that they will get a new identity in the country that they live in after openly accusing the perpetrator, they will have the courage to speak out. In contrast, if they know that they will not get protected by the country they live in, they will be afraid to speak, because the guy who exploited and beat them up will follow them and pick them up again, and will beat and possibly kill them for giving a witness statement. Therefore it is so important to have this protection for victims who have the courage to speak out, otherwise we will not get them to speak out – although it is easy to understand why they would not do so.

In relation to what the two speakers from Canada said: yes, ultimately it is a matter of poverty. Mr Schneider said this as well. As long as there are huge gaps in wages and salaries, of course, people will want to migrate to Canada, which has good labour standards, wages and protection. After the debate yesterday about Greece and the migrants there, I can easily imagine that many people now have nothing and are living on the streets. If somebody offers them a nice job in Canada, Germany, or the United Kingdom, for example, promising them paradise on earth, of course they will follow, because they do not have any alternative. This is the biggest problem. We need not only to harmonise legislation; perhaps, in Europe, we need to harmonise the wages a little bit. All countries need at least to have a guaranteed minimum wage. Most European Union member States have that, but my country is still failing to adopt it. Poverty is one of the main causes of migration and trafficking, and many other related crimes.

Mr Connarty rightly said that this involves business. We should publicly make a scandal of those enterprises that we know for sure use slaves, whether in construction, a hotel, a restaurant or a textile enterprise. We need to incorporate business in our strategy.

I appreciate that, to get the recommendation, we need some follow-up reports on this subject. I agree with this. If that idea being adopted is one of the results of our debate today, I will be satisfied and glad. I am ready to push this with everybody else who would like more detailed reports on, for instance, diplomatic households.

When I was working and living in Geneva in the 90s, there was a big scandal about slaves working in the private home of a Swedish couple who both had high-paid jobs in the United Nations. Yet still they exploited workers in their house. It is difficult to deal with that, because diplomatic households are extra-territorial places, so I cannot just march in and say, “Hey! May I just check your house and talk to your servants?” However, it is worth making the effort and we should tackle this.

I was shocked when Mr Schennach mentioned kids and the begging industry. It is an industry, and a well-organised one. I know that from Romania, but it is also an international network that operates in Germany and elsewhere. It is a crass violation of human rights. There is a lot ahead of us and we need to tackle it.

      THE PRESIDENT* – Thank you.

The debate is closed

The Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons has presented a draft resolution, to which four amendments have been tabled. In addition, there is a draft recommendation. Amendments will be taken in the order in which they appear in the compendium and the “Organisation of debates”.

      I remind members that speeches on amendments are limited to 30 seconds.

      I understand that the chairperson of the committee wishes to propose to the Assembly that the following amendments, which were unanimously approved by the Committee, should be declared as agreed by the Assembly under Rule 33.11. They are Amendments 1, 2 and 3 to the draft resolution. Is that so Ms Groth?

      Ms GROTH (Germany) – Yes.

      THE PRESIDENT* – Does anyone object?

      As there is no objection, I declare Amendments 1, 2 and 3 to the draft resolution adopted.

The following amendments are adopted:

Amendment 1, tabled by the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination, which is, in the draft resolution, in paragraph 7, replace the words "representatives of civil society and trade unions” with the following words: “tax authorities, health services, representatives of civil society including NGOs, the third sector and trade unions.”

Amendment 2, tabled by the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination, which is, in the draft resolution, after paragraph 8.1.1, insert the following paragraph:

“appointing an independent National Rapporteur on human trafficking, in charge of the follow-up on this issue and of reporting periodically to the government and parliament on the national situation;”.

Amendment 3, tabled by the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination, which is, in the draft resolution, after paragraph 8.1.5, insert the following paragraph:

“introducing Action Plans on human trafficking and closely involving parliaments in their preparation, implementation and monitoring of the implementation;”.

We will proceed to consider the remaining amendment. I remind members that speeches on amendments are limited to 30 seconds.

      We come to Amendment 4, tabled by the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination, which is, in the draft resolution, after paragraph 8.1.7, insert the following paragraph:

“providing the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) with sufficient financial and human resources, and ensuring the independence of the experts appointed;”.

I call Ms Groth to support the Amendment 4.

Ms GROTH (Germany) – The committee adopted the amendment unanimously, for which I am grateful, because the wording is more specific.

THE PRESIDENT* – Thank you.

Does anyone wish to speak against the amendment?

That is not the case.

What is the opinion of the committee?

Ms GROTH (Germany) – Mr Santini is absent, so I shall speak instead. We adopted the amendment unanimously, but we were not sure whether to put it in the draft recommendation or the text. It is now up to the Assembly to decide.

THE PRESIDENT* – As far as I am concerned, it goes in the resolution, because that is as far as we have got. I will check, but I do not foresee any problem.

The vote is open

We will now proceed to vote on the whole of the draft resolution contained in Document 13086, as amended. A simple majority is required.

The vote is open.

      The draft resolution in Document 13086, as amended, is unanimously adopted, with 39 votes for.

      The Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons has presented a draft recommendation, to which I understand there is an oral amendment.

      I remind members that speeches on amendments are limited to 30 seconds.

I have received an oral amendment from Ms Groth, on behalf of the Migration Committee, which reads as follows:

In the draft recommendation, at the end of 4.3 add the words: “providing the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) with sufficient financial and human resource, and ensuring the independence of the experts appointed.”

I remind the Assembly of Rule 33.7.a, which enables the President to accept an oral amendment or sub-amendment on the grounds of promoting clarity, accuracy or conciliation and if there is not opposition from ten or more members to it being debated.

      In my opinion the oral amendment meets the criteria of Rule 33.7.a Is there any opposition to the amendment being debated?

      That is not the case. I therefore call Ms Groth, on behalf of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons to support the oral amendment.

      Ms GROTH (Germany) – I support the amendment.

      THE PRESIDENT* – That is exactly what I was hoping to hear. Thank you.

      Does anyone wish to speak against the oral amendment?

That is not the case.

      The committee is in favour.

      The vote is open.

      The oral amendment is adopted.

      We will now proceed to vote on the whole of the draft recommendation contained in Document 13086, as amended. A two-thirds majority is required.

      The vote is open.

      The draft resolution in Document 13086, as amended, is unanimously adopted, with 37 votes for.

      I congratulate the rapporteur and the committee’s secretariat, who worked very hard. I commend them for the quality of the report, which received unanimous backing. That is rare.

5. Constitution of the Standing Committee

      THE PRESIDENT* – The next business today is to constitute the Standing Committee under Rule 16.2. The membership of the Standing Committee is fixed by Rule 16.3, as follows: the President of the Assembly, the Vice-Presidents of the Assembly, the leaders of the political groups, the chairpersons of national delegations, and the chairpersons of the general committees. A full list of members is set out in document Commissions (2013) 2.

      The Standing Committee is accordingly constituted.

6. Personal statement

      THE PRESIDENT* – I call Mr Agramunt to make a personal statement.

      Mr AGRAMUNT (Spain)* – The report of yesterday’s meeting suggests that an Armenian colleague said that I told lies when I spoke about the Azerbaijan monitoring report. This is in relation to the response of a member of the Armenian delegation to the Monitoring Committee last October. I said that about 20% of Azerbaidjani territory was occupied by Armenia, but the member said this was not true – he said it was only 13% – and when I talked about 1 million refugees or displaced people, he said the figure was 900 000. That is in the minutes of the Monitoring Committee’s meeting in October, which can be easily found on the Internet. I was telling the truth, and it was Mr Harutyunyan who was not telling the truth yesterday morning. I wanted to record that in the report of today’s proceedings.

THE PRESIDENT* – Thank you.

7. References to Committees

      THE PRESIDENT* – The Bureau has proposed a number of references to committees for ratification by the Assembly. They have been set out in Document As/INF (2013) 03.

      Is there any objection to the proposed references to the committees?

There is no objection, so the references are approved.

8. Written declarations

      THE PRESIDENT* – The following written declarations have been tabled: No. 536 entitled “Intercountry adoption: children as hostages of international relations”, which has been signed by 34 members, Document 13113; No. 537 entitled “Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev and the European Court of Human Rights”, which has been signed by 32 members, Document 13114; No. 538 entitled “Relocation, economic efficiency and social responsibility”, which has been signed by 32 members, Document 13116.

      Any member, substitute, observer or partner for democracy may add his or her signature to these written declarations in the Table Office, Room 1083 at any time before the close of the part-session today.

9. Voting champions

      THE PRESIDENT* – I am pleased to be able to announce the names of our voting champions: those members who have been the most assiduous voters during this part-session.

      They are Mr Koç, Mr von Sydow, Mr Schennach, Ms Erkal Kara and Lord Tomlinson. I congratulate all of them and say to those who have not been mentioned, keep trying. Because we still have a zero-growth budget, we have only got one prize to hand out.

10. End of the part-session

      THE PRESIDENT* – I call Lord Tomlinson, who has asked for the floor.

      Lord TOMLINSON (United Kingdom) – I am informed that this is Mrs Jane Dinsdale’s last part-session before she retires. May I, on behalf of members of the Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy, where we have seen a lot of her, say how very much we have valued her services and how sorry we are to see her go? I see her sitting very modestly in the corner, but I wanted to put that on record.

      THE PRESIDENT* – I echo your sentiments, dear friend. You are obviously better informed than I am, because I was not aware of that. Jane, thank you very much. Lord Tomlinson has said everything that needs to be said, but had I known, we would have done something yesterday – perhaps a formal announcement in respect of all the work you have done in this Organisation – when there were more members in the Chamber. It is a pity that we were not able to do that, but I am sure that you will make an appearance at the second part-session so that we can properly recognise all the high-quality work you have done. I join Lord Tomlinson in everything he has said.

Dear colleagues, we have now come to the end of our business.

I thank the Secretary General and all members of the Assembly, particularly rapporteurs of committees, for their hard work during this part-session. I would also like to thank the staff, both permanent and temporary, who have worked hard to make the part-session a success. I thank the ushers, and I thank the interpreters for the quality of their work.

The second part-session of the Assembly will be held from Monday 22 April to Friday 26 April 2013.

I declare the first part of the 2013 session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe closed.

(The sitting was closed at 12.55 p.m.)

CONTENTS

1. Written declarations

2. Changes in the membership of committees

3. Gender equality, reconciliation of personal and working life and shared responsibility

Presentation by Ms Quintanilla of report of the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination in Doc. 13080.

Speakers:

Ms Fusu (Republic of Moldova)

Mr Kürkçü (Turkey)

Ms Kovács (Serbia)

Ms Bilgehan (Turkey)

Mr Mendes Bota (Portugal)

Ms Bourzai (France)

Ms Palihovici (Republic of Moldova)

Ms Brasseur (Luxembourg)

Ms Gafarova (Azerbaijan)

Mr Triantafyllos (Greece)

Ms Blanco (Spain)

Ms Ohlsson (Sweden)

Ms Boutin-Sweet (Canada)

Ms Zappone (Ireland)

Ms Turmel (Canada)

Ms Djurović (Serbia)

Replies:

Ms Quintanilla (Spain)

Ms Acketoft (Sweden)

Amendment 1 adopted

Draft resolution, as amended, adopted

4. Trafficking of migrant workers for forced labour

Presentation by Ms Groth of report of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons in Doc. 13086

Presentation by Ms Mattila (Finland) of opinion of the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination in Doc. 13108

Speakers:

Mr Kox (Netherlands)

Mr Schneider (France)

Mr Schennach (Austria)

Mr Chikovani (Georgia)

Ms Erkal Kara (Turkey)

Mr Connarty (United Kingdom)

Ms Turmel (Canada)

Ms Carlino (Italy)

Mr Shipley (Canada)

Ms Boutin-Sweet (Canada)

Ms Blanco (Spain)

Reply:

Ms Groth (Germany)

Amendments 1 to 4 adopted

Draft resolution, as amended, adopted

Oral amendment adopted

Draft recommendation, as amended, adopted

5. Constitution of the Standing Committee

6. Personal statement

7. References to committees

8. Written declarations

9. Voting champions

10. End of the part-session

Appendix

Representatives or Substitutes who signed the Attendance Register in accordance with Rule 11.2 of the Rules of Procedure. The names of Substitutes who replaced absent Representatives are printed in small letters. The names of those who were absent or apologised for absence are followed by an asterisk.

Francis AGIUS*

Pedro AGRAMUNT

Arben AHMETAJ*

Miloš ALIGRUDIĆ

Karin ANDERSEN*

Lord Donald ANDERSON*

Paride ANDREOLI*

Khadija ARIB/Marjolein Faber-Van De Klashorst

Volodymyr ARIEV

Mörđur ÁRNASON

Francisco ASSIS*

Danielle AUROI*

Ţuriđur BACKMAN*

Daniel BACQUELAINE*

Viorel Riceard BADEA*

Theodora BAKOYANNIS/Maria Giannakaki

David BAKRADZE*

Gérard BAPT/Philippe Bies

Gerard BARCIA DUEDRA*

Doris BARNETT*

José Manuel BARREIRO*

Deniz BAYKAL

Marieluise BECK*

José María BENEYTO*

Levan BERDZENISHVILI*

Deborah BERGAMINI*

Robert BIEDROŃ*

Gülsün BİLGEHAN

Brian BINLEY*

Ľuboš BLAHA/Darina Gabániová

Delia BLANCO

Jean-Marie BOCKEL*

Eric BOCQUET*

Olga BORZOVA

Mladen BOSIĆ/Ismeta Dervoz

António BRAGA*

Anne BRASSEUR

Márton BRAUN*

Federico BRICOLO*

Ankie BROEKERS-KNOL*

Piet DE BRUYN*

Patrizia BUGNANO/Giuliana Carlino

André BUGNON

Natalia BURYKINA*

Sylvia CANEL*

Mevlüt ÇAVUŞOĞLU*

Mikael CEDERBRATT*

Otto CHALOUPKA*

Irakli CHIKOVANI

Vannino CHITI*

Christopher CHOPE

Lise CHRISTOFFERSEN*

Desislav CHUKOLOV*

Lolita ČIGĀNE*

Boriss CILEVIČS

Henryk CIOCH*

James CLAPPISON*

Deirdre CLUNE/Katherine Zappone

Agustín CONDE*

Igor CORMAN*

Telmo CORREIA*

Carlos COSTA NEVES*

Joseph DEBONO GRECH*

Giovanna DEBONO*

Armand De DECKER*

Arcadio DÍAZ TEJERA/Carmen Quintanilla

Peter van DIJK

Klaas DIJKHOFF*

Şaban DİŞLİ*

Jim DOBBIN*

Karl DONABAUER*

Ioannis DRAGASAKIS

Daphné DUMERY*

Alexander [The Earl of] DUNDEE*

Josette DURRIEU/Bernadette Bourzai

Mikuláš DZURINDA

Baroness Diana ECCLES*

Tülin ERKAL KARA

Gianni FARINA

Relu FENECHIU*

Vyacheslav FETISOV*

Doris FIALA/Raphaël Comte

Daniela FILIPIOVÁ*

Axel E. FISCHER*

Jana FISCHEROVÁ*

Gvozden Srećko FLEGO*

Hans FRANKEN*

Jean-Claude FRÉCON*

Erich Georg FRITZ*

Sir Roger GALE*

Jean-Charles GARDETTO

Tamás GAUDI NAGY*

Nadezda GERASIMOVA

Valeriu GHILETCHI

Paolo GIARETTA*

Jean GLAVANY*

Michael GLOS*

Pavol GOGA

Jarosław GÓRCZYŃSKI*

Svetlana GORYACHEVA*

Martin GRAF*

Sylvi GRAHAM*

Andreas GROSS

Arlette GROSSKOST*

Dzhema GROZDANOVA*

Attila GRUBER*

Gergely GULYÁS*

Pelin GÜNDEŞ BAKIR

Antonio GUTIÉRREZ*

Ana GUŢU/Corina Fusu

Carina HÄGG/Jonas Gunnarsson

Sabir HAJIYEV*

Andrzej HALICKI*

Mike HANCOCK*

Margus HANSON*

Davit HARUTYUNYAN

Hĺkon HAUGLI*

Norbert HAUPERT

Alfred HEER/Elisabeth Schneider-Schneiter

Martin HENRIKSEN*

Andres HERKEL

Adam HOFMAN*

Jim HOOD*

Joachim HÖRSTER

Arpine HOVHANNISYAN

Anette HÜBINGER

Andrej HUNKO*

Susanna HUOVINEN*

Ali HUSEYNLI/Sahiba Gafarova

Rafael HUSEYNOV*

Shpëtim IDRIZI*

Vladimir ILIČ

Igor IVANOVSKI*

Tadeusz IWIŃSKI*

Denis JACQUAT/André Schneider

Roman JAKIČ*

Tedo JAPARIDZE*

Ramón JÁUREGUI/Jordi Xuclŕ

Michael Aastrup JENSEN*

Mogens JENSEN*

Mats JOHANSSON/Tina Acketoft

Jadranka JOKSIMOVIĆ/Aleksandra Djurović

Birkir Jón JÓNSSON*

Čedomir JOVANOVIĆ*

Antti KAIKKONEN*

Ferenc KALMÁR*

Božidar KALMETA*

Mariusz KAMIŃSKI*

Marietta KARAMANLI*

Burhan KAYATÜRK

Jan KAŹMIERCZAK*

Serhii KIVALOV*

Bogdan KLICH*

Serhiy KLYUEV*

Haluk KOÇ

Igor KOLMAN*

Alev KORUN

Tiny KOX

Borjana KRIŠTO*

Dmitry KRYVITSKY*

Václav KUBATA*

Ertuğrul KÜRKÇÜ

Athina KYRIAKIDOU*

Jean-Yves LE DÉAUT*

Igor LEBEDEV*

Harald LEIBRECHT*

Orinta LEIPUTĖ

Terry LEYDEN*

Inese LĪBIŅA-EGNERE*

Lone LOKLINDT*

François LONCLE*

Jean-Louis LORRAIN*

George LOUKAIDES*

Younal LOUTFI*

Yuliya L'OVOCHKINA*

Saša MAGAZINOVIĆ

Philippe MAHOUX*

Gennaro MALGIERI*

Nicole MANZONE-SAQUET*

Pietro MARCENARO*

Thierry MARIANI/Frédéric Reiss

Epameinondas MARIAS

Milica MARKOVIĆ*

Meritxell MATEU PI*

Pirkko MATTILA

Frano MATUŠIĆ

Liliane MAURY PASQUIER

Michael McNAMARA*

Sir Alan MEALE*

Ermira MEHMETI DEVAJA*

Ivan MELNIKOV*

Nursuna MEMECAN

José MENDES BOTA

Jean-Claude MIGNON

Djordje MILIĆEVIĆ/Elvira Kovács

Federica MOGHERINI REBESANI*

Andrey MOLCHANOV*

Jerzy MONTAG*

Rubén MORENO PALANES

Patrick MORIAU*

Joăo Bosco MOTA AMARAL

Arkadiusz MULARCZYK*

Alejandro MUŃOZ-ALONSO

Lydia MUTSCH/Félix Braz

Lev MYRYMSKYI*

Philippe NACHBAR*

Oľga NACHTMANNOVÁ

Gebhard NEGELE

Aleksandar NENKOV*

Pasquale NESSA*

Fritz NEUGEBAUER*

Baroness Emma NICHOLSON*

Elena NIKOLAEVA*

Aleksandar NIKOLOSKI*

Mirosława NYKIEL*

Carina OHLSSON

Joseph O'REILLY*

Lesia OROBETS

Sandra OSBORNE*

Liliana PALIHOVICI

Dimitrios PAPADIMOULIS*

Eva PARERA*

Ganira PASHAYEVA*

Lajla PERNASKA*

Johannes PFLUG*

Foteini PIPILI

Ivan POPESCU

Lisbeth Bech POULSEN*

Marietta de POURBAIX-LUNDIN

Cezar Florin PREDA*

John PRESCOTT/Michael Connarty

Jakob PRESEČNIK*

Radoslav PROCHÁZKA/József Nagy

Gabino PUCHE*

Alexey PUSHKOV*

Mailis REPS*

Eva RICHTROVÁ/Miroslav Krejča

Andrea RIGONI*

François ROCHEBLOINE*

Maria de Belém ROSEIRA/Ana Catarina Mendonça

René ROUQUET

Marlene RUPPRECHT*

Ilir RUSMALI*

Pavlo RYABIKIN

Rovshan RZAYEV*

Giacomo SANTINI*

Giuseppe SARO*

Kimmo SASI*

Stefan SCHENNACH

Marina SCHUSTER*

Urs SCHWALLER

Damir ŠEHOVIĆ*

Senad ŠEPIĆ*

Samad SEYIDOV*

Jim SHERIDAN*

Oleksandr SHEVCHENKO

Boris SHPIGEL*

Arturas SKARDŽIUS

Ladislav SKOPAL/Dana Váhalová

Leonid SLUTSKY*

Serhiy SOBOLEV*

Lorella STEFANELLI*

Yanaki STOILOV*

Christoph STRÄSSER*

Karin STRENZ*

Giacomo STUCCHI*

Valeriy SUDARENKOV*

Björn von SYDOW

Petro SYMONENKO*

Vilmos SZABÓ*

Melinda SZÉKYNÉ SZTRÉMI/Imre Vejkey

Chiora TAKTAKISHVILI*

Vyacheslav TIMCHENKO*

Romana TOMC*

Lord John E. TOMLINSON

Latchezar TOSHEV*

Mihai TUDOSE*

Ahmet Kutalmiş TÜRKEŞ

Tuğrul TÜRKEŞ*

Theodora TZAKRI

Tomáš ÚLEHLA*

Ilyas UMAKHANOV*

Viktor USPASKICH/Egidijus Vareikis

Giuseppe VALENTINO*

Miltiadis VARVITSIOTIS/Konstantinos Triantafyllos

Ljubica VASIĆ/Stefana Miladinović

Volodymyr VECHERKO*

Stefaan VERCAMER*

Anne-Mari VIROLAINEN*

Luigi VITALI*

Luca VOLONTČ

Vladimir VORONIN/Grigore Petrenco

Varujan VOSGANIAN*

Tanja VRBAT*

Klaas de VRIES*

Nataša VUČKOVIĆ

Zoran VUKČEVIĆ

Piotr WACH

Johann WADEPHUL*

Robert WALTER*

Dame Angela WATKINSON*

Katrin WERNER*

Renate WOHLWEND

Karin S. WOLDSETH*

Gisela WURM

Karl ZELLER*

Svetlana ZHUROVA*

Emanuelis ZINGERIS/Dangutė Mikutienė

Guennady ZIUGANOV*

Naira ZOHRABYAN

Levon ZOURABIAN

Vacant Seat, Cyprus*

Vacant Seat, Montenegro*

Vacant Seat, Romania*

Vacant Seat, Romania*

Vacant Seat, Romania*

Vacant Seat, Romania*

Vacant Seat, Romania*

ALSO PRESENT

Representatives and Substitutes not authorised to vote

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Observers

Marjolaine BOUTIN-SWEET

Corneliu CHISU

Michel RIVARD

Bev SHIPLEY

Nycole TURMEL

Partners for Democracy

Bernard SABELLA

Mohamed YATIM