Debates of the European Parliament

SITTING OF TUESDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER 2003

DAPHNE II (2004 – 2008)

Karamanou (PSE). – (EL) Mr President, Commissioner, preventing and combating violence against women and children is a high priority for the committee which I have the honour of chairing and we are fighting for it to be placed at the top of the European Union’s agenda.

The Committee on Women’s Rights and Equal Opportunities made huge efforts to combat violence immediately after Peking and as a result of these efforts the DAPHNE Programme was adopted, the extension of which until 2008 is the subject of today’s debate.

Our committee, for whom Mrs Gröner is acting as rapporteur, welcomes the adoption of the second phase of the DAPHNE Programme until 2008 and the increase in its budget. Violence against women and children is known to be a widespread phenomenon, but I should like to refer in particular to something which happened at the height of summer. Of course, this matter would not have received so much publicity in the international press were it not about the daughter of the famous French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant. We know that Marie Trintignant was battered to death by her French partner, the musician Bertrand Cantat. Of course, there are thousands of women who suffer violence on a daily basis within the European Union itself, thousands of women and children daily suffer humiliating treatment and/or fatal violence from men like the worthy Mr Cantat. The UN even maintains that more women die from domestic violence than of cancer. In addition, as flows of immigrants have increased over recent years, we know that thousands of women and children within Europe are the victim of the new form of slavery, trafficking for profit and sexual exploitation.

This is a complete denial of fundamental rights and freedoms, in other words of everything that makes human life dignified, which is why my political group believes, given the size of and rapid increase in the problem over recent years, that a significant increase in the budget is needed, because the programme is the only source of funding for the agencies involved in this issue. During the previous period, funding weaknesses limited the full application of the programme, because it was unable to meet the increased demands which Mrs Avilés Perea also referred to earlier. In addition, it is a known fact that our committee made an effort to raise the awareness of the members of the Convention so that they would adopt a stronger legal basis to combat violence, but unfortunately our call fell on deaf ears.

Mr President, I think that our rapporteur, Mrs Gröner, has set out our claims in detail and her report is truly excellent.