STRASBOURG — With a year to go before the EU elections, four pregnant European Parliament members are leading a campaign with their male allies to make their workplace more hospitable to younger candidates by securing parental leave for lawmakers.
Unlike members of national parliaments in countries like Spain, EU lawmakers cannot keep voting if they take time out to look after newborn children because there is no official procedure to permit parental leave and remote voting.
“It’s 2023. If you’re forced to choose between your votes and your child that’s a really bad signal, especially for young women,” Lara Wolters, a Dutch MEP from the Socialists & Democrats group who’s expecting her second child, told POLITICO in an interview Thursday.
The absence of just one MEP could make all the difference — as a recent flurry of finely balanced votes on legislation ranging from corporate due diligence to restoring natural habitats has shown.
Even though MEPs are still paid their full salaries and protected from sanctions if they miss plenary votes when taking time off work for parental reasons, the Parliament currently has no provisions to allow heavily pregnant MEPs to vote if they can’t physically make it to Strasbourg. The set-up, those pushing for parental leave argued, essentially means MEPs are punished if they choose to have kids.
“It is undemocratic and it is sexist,” Austrian MEP Claudia Gamon — who’s with the liberal Renew group and expecting a child — said in a speech to Parliament Monday evening, when a cluster of male and female MEPs coordinated speeches to bring attention to the issue.
Thirteen MEPs handed a petition to President Roberta Metsola in her office Tuesday pushing for reforms, asking for recognized parental leave, remote voting, and the possibility to nominate an MEP as a substitute.
Metsola was supportive, signed the manifesto, and pledged to see what could be done, said several MEPs who were present — but her spokesperson warned it was a “legally and technically a complicated issue.”
French Left MEP Leïla Chaibi, who’s also pregnant, said: “It was positive, but we’re not going to give it up.”
MEPs have pushed for permanent rule changes for years in various formats to no avail and despite the fact that remote voting was briefly possible during the pandemic.
“I think there’s a lot of dormant frustration among members who know that this has been tried and still we haven’t changed the rules,” Wolters said. “I have a feeling that we might now have a critical mass to get this thing off the ground.”
Wolters said the main pocket of resistance is found in the Parliament’s administration, which has technical arguments — some of which she understands — about why remote voting or voting by proxy could be problematic. For instance, it may be difficult to guarantee the anonymity of certain members’ voting records if nearly everyone is voting in person.
But Wolters doesn’t agree with all the hurdles being thrown up by officials.
“The argument that’s being put forward by some in the administration that this is a sliding scale — that, I think, is ridiculous because not everybody has a child or adopts a child,” she said.
Delphine Colard, the Parliament’s deputy spokesperson, wrote in a message: “The Members of the Parliament organise the exercise of their free mandate themselves, so there is no ‘leave authorisation’ necessary or possible; in this there is no difference on the basis of gender.”
“The European Parliament has also facilities in place in Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg to allow parents to work leaving their children in adapted family rooms,” she added.
Wolters, Gamon, Chaibi and Spanish S&D MEP Adriana Maldonado, who spearheaded the recent push with a letter she sent to Metsola in early May, now have a WhatsApp group called “Maternity Manifesto” and are searching for more signatures.
“The visibility of four women with big bellies is good in itself to underline the point,” Wolters said with a chuckle.
