In the National Assembly Building, members of WPN had the opportunity to meet Iris Eberl, member of Bundestag and member of the Committee for EU Affairs. They talked with her about the achieved results and the future activities of the Network.
Dubravka Filipovski, Coordinator of WPN, presented the primary goals that the Network was advocating for: higher participation of women in the executive and legislative branches of power, healthcare and family; elimination of gender-based violence; economic empowerment and education of women. Ms. Filipovski said that WPN cooperated with NGOs as well. She particularly highlighted that in 2013, upon the initiative of all women MPs, the Criminal Code was amended with an amendment according to which there was no statute of limitations in case of criminal offences related to the sexual abuse of minors. Ms. Filipovski said that the WPN organised three National Conferences with the aim to establish women’s networks in municipal assemblies, which is why today, in the Republic of Serbia, there were 53 such networks at the local level. She also underlined that, due to the initiative of the WPN, the First Regional Conference of 11 countries from Southeast Europe was held, which resulted in the signed Memorandum of Cooperation on the influence of women in parliamentary political parties and gender equality areas.
The women parliamentarians have also said that they were responsible for the introduction of gender-sensitive budgeting in the Law on Budgetary System. This was a great success achieved by all women MPs of the National Assembly together. The further discussion was also focused on the
number of women in the executive and the legislative branches, underlining that women were 30% of every committee of the National Assembly of Serbia, even though this was not required by the law.
Members of the Network used the opportunity to inform the member of Bundestag Iris Eberl about their initiatives to increase the number of women in the executive branch to 50% and to adopt a new law on gender equality. “The European Commission recommended that, buy the year 2020, when the Republic of Serbia should become part of EU, there should be 40% of women in decision-making positions,” said Ms. Filipovski.
Ms. Eberl said that she was a member of the Women’s Union, even though she came from a conservative political party. As a member of a Committee for EU affairs, she highlighted that the challenges and conclusions related to gender equality and women’s empowerment were similar for the entire Europe, underlining that the key to changing the position of women was education. She expressed her position that women forced into prostitution were the ones in the most vulnerable and unacceptable situation, and these women mostly originated from the countries of Southeast Europe. “The most important thing is to have as many women’s initiatives as possible. In these times of open borders, only if we act together, we can improve the position of women,” said Ms. Eberl.
Gordana Čomić stated that, in the upcoming period, she would personally advocate not only for the position of women, but of refugees as well. The refugees were not responsible for the wave of terrorism that threatened Europe. According to Ms. Čomić, our main idea should be that it was okay for people to be different, but we all shared the obligation to focus on our similarities.
In the end, Ms. Ebert wished a lot of success to Serbian parliamentarians in reaching their goals. Together with the Hanns Seidel Foundation, she invited them to visit Berlin in late October.
Meeting between members of Women’s Parliamentary Network and Iris Eberl, member of the Bundestag and member of the Committee for EU Affairs
