European Women's Lobby - History: When, By Whom and Why

History: When, By Whom and Why

It all started in London in November 1987 when 120 women, member of 85 organisations representing 50 millions individual members, came together and adopted two resolutions. The first called for the ‘creation of a structure for influence, open to all interested women’s organisations, to exert pressure on European and national institutions to ensure better defence and representation of women’s interest’. In a second resolution, the delegates called upon the European Commission to ‘lend its support for the organisation in early 1988 of a meeting with a view to the implementation of such a structure’. Support was granted and the European Women’s Lobby and its secretariat in Brussels were formally established in 1990. The EWL was founded in 1990 by Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom national coordinations and 17 large European-wide women’s organisations.

At the time just twelve countries formed the European Union, then known as the European Communities (EC). Over the years, as new Member States joined the EC, new national co-ordinations became members of the EWL. While the EU enlarged to countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the EWL established links and cooperation with women’s organisations in these countries and successfully continues to welcome new national members every year.

The EWL currently has national co ordinations in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia,Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom. 21 European-wide member organisations are also members of the EWL. All these represent approximately 2500 direct member organisations.

The European Women’s Lobby was created in response to a growing awareness of the need to defend women’s interests at European level since:

• Equality between women and men is one of the missions of the European Union, which has a strong competence to adopt legislation in this area affecting all women and men living in Europe.
• The scope of the European Union’s activities were and continue to be extending and affect areas with a direct impact on women’s daily lives, particularly with the establishment of the internal market.
• It became urgent for women and their organisations to participate in the programmes established by the Union and to get acquainted with European legislation affecting them.
• The creation of such an organisation and its designation of lobbying also corresponds to the particular character of the European-level decision-making process, which allows space for the creation of many organisations, founded to represent all types of interest groups and categories of the public (including various economic sectors as well as trade unions, professional and social grouping).
• These organisations were responding to a real need on the part of the European institutions. Contrary to perceived ideas, the number of European officials is low, with only around 24000 people comprising the whole of the European Commission for example. The institutions therefore often call on experts in the course of their work, due in particular to the diversity of the Member States’ people and legislation.
• As decision-makers within the European institutions are not directly elected by the citizens, with the exception of the European Parliament, the creation of and organisation such as EWL also corresponds to the need to fill the democratic gap between the EU institutions and the citizens.

The creation of the EWL was therefore linked to the creation of a new form of public space at European level and a new form of interaction between citizens and political officials.