The Indirect Future Influence of the EU on Post-communist Family Policy

Abstract

Theorists of Europeanization expected the EU to have the greatest influence on post-communist countries during the period of negotiation to join the EU as the EU had the greatest possibilities of pressuring the post-communist countries to make reforms before they joined, on the grounds that it could threaten to prevent these countries from joining unless they met certain conditions. However, in the case of family policy, the EU had very little direct influence on the post-communist countries. These countries had already long since met the minimum conditions for maternity leaves, while they simply ignored the Barcelona goal of providing day care for one-third of children aged under three. When the Czech Republic had the EU presidency, its Prime Minister openly stated that the post-communist countries would have never agreed to the Barcelona goals if they had been members at the time the agreement was made. The one area in which the EU has had some direct influence is in its demands to make laws gender neutral. Thus, the 'extended maternity leaves' that follow the more generously paid maternity leaves had to be transformed into 'parental leaves' that are open to men and guarantee men the right to get their job backs afterwards. However, since the leave benefits are a low flat-rate in most of the countries, very few men have gone on leave; so in practice they have remained as 'extended maternity leaves' more than parental leaves. Nevertheless, the EU has had great indirect influence on family policy in that by requiring 'gender mainstreaming', all the post-communist countries have had to set up commissions that examine law proposals from a gender equality perspective. This in turn has given the notion of 'gender equality' much more legitimacy in the public eye, as the mass media has felt pressure to report more on these issues. After discussing the actual changes in policies in two post-communist countries (the Czech Republic and Poland), this article goes on to analyze the discourse on feminism in the main daily newspapers, and it shows that before accession the newspapers were rather hostile towards feminism, while afterwards they have become much more accepting of the term. This more open view towards 'feminism' meant that it would be easier for future reforms in family policy to be made which could be more supportive of gender equality. Thus, Poland has recently reformed its parental leaves in a manner that gives men greater incentives to share in the leaves, and an openly feminist activist, who wants fathers to share in parental leaves, has recently become Minister for Labour and Social Affairs in the Czech Republic. The EU did not have any direct influence on these developments, but by forcing countries to have gender equality commissions, the EU contributed to making 'feminism' more acceptable, which in turn made it easier for feminists to become ministers in charge of social policy, who could carry out reforms long after the countries had joined the EU.