BRUSSELS (AP) — At first glance, the European Union may seem like a paragon of gender equality — what with Ursula von der Leyen heading the all-important...
heading the all-important executive branch. Still, all the talk this week is about an excess of men poised for top positions at the EU headquarters., would want anything other than full gender parity in the body that runs the day-to-day business of the world's biggest trading bloc of 450 million people.
So it makes it especially galling for von der Leyen, who is setting up the team for her second five-year mandate, that her hands are tied and she can't independently pick her commissioners. In her first five-year term, there was near gender parity among EU commissioners. But von der Leyen is beholden to the EU's complicated rules that allow every member nation to put forward a commissioner. And while von der Leyen asked them to field a male and female candidate to make her job picking the right politician for each portfolio easier, all too many member states have flat out ignored her since they have the law, if not politics, on their side.
Von der Leyen at first started out with 21 men on the list, which would make for a male dominated European Commission — the extent of which has not been seen in more than two decades — and she has been working to get that figure down. And late Monday, she got some good news from the last holdout nation, Belgium. It ditched outgoing Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders, who was bent on returning, and picked Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib to bring the balance to a potential 17-10.
QINGDAO, China, Sept. 03, 2024 -- The Fifth Qingdao Multinationals Summit, co-hosted by Shandong Province and the Ministry of Commerce, opened on August 28 in Qingdao, Shandong.
Ursula Von Der Leyen Gender Parity European Union Gender Equality EU Headquarters Gender Balance Commission President Commissioner
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