European Parliament

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33519, 27 April 1974, Page 15

European Parliament

(N.Z.PA.-Reuter-— Copyright) STRASBOURG, April 26. Equal pay for women and a 40-hour week throughout the Common Market are called for in reports before the European Parliament today. Social issues dominate the final day of the Parliament’s four-day session, ranging from expressions of alarm over the declining birth-rate in the Community to a demand that shortages of raw materials should not be used by industry to make excessive profits. A report drawn up by the Parliamentary Committee on Social Affairs and Employment accuses member-gov-

lernments of discrimination: ■by operating systems of different wage rates and promotion prospects for men and women. It demands the progressive abolition of wage groups to which women are predominantly, or exclusively, assigned. Another report from the same committee asks mem-ber-states to adopt 40-hour working weeks by the end of next year, and four weeks paid holiday a year by the end of 1976. The President of the Executive Commission (Mr Fran c o i s-Xavier Ortoli) yesterday appealed to the governments of memberstates to lift the Community from its state of crisis. Several speakers mentioned the British Government’s plans to renegotiate Britain’s membership terms

as a prime factor in the E.E.C.’s difficulties, but a British Conservative, Mr Peter Kirk, emphasised that the Community had stopped working properly long before Britain’s General Election. In a lively, and often partisan, debate on the role of multi-national oil companies in the energy crisis, Socialist Parliamentarians called on the Commission to press for an international code of iconduct for those companies. A Commissioner, Mr Albert Borschette acknowledged some abuses by some I multi-nationals of their i dominant position either in i imposing price levels or eliminating smaller comipanies but said that action must come in the wider context of the United Nations,