Evaluation questions and evaluation criteria

• Author: Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers (European Commission), EY
• Pages: 33-34

EVALUATION ON THE APPLICATION OF DIRECTIVE 79/7/EEC ON THE PROGRESSIVE IMPLEMENTATION OF

THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUAL TREATMENT FOR MEN AND WOMEN IN MATTERS OF SOCIAL SECURITY

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expectation for women to take time out to fill such a caring responsi bility serves as a further

hindrance to female participation in the labour market.

Finally, the role of the Gender Pay Gap is worth to be mentioned. Notwithstanding European

legislative efforts to abolish direct and i ndirect gender discrimination in terms of pay, there is

still a 16.2% gap in the EU.29 This is also partly due to the gender segregation of the labour

market. Women are usually employed in lower paying jobs because of both the economic

sectors they are concentrated in and a lower access to career advancements. Even if it is clear

that this factor is not directly relevant in itself for the Directive, as covered by the Recast

Directive 2006/54, it has an indirect effect on the level of statut ory social security benefits and

therefore disadvantages female workers in the acquisition of such social security rights.

In conclusion, even though most of the labor market relat ed elements previously mentioned do

not directly fall within the scope of the Directive 79/7/ EEC, the information about the socio-

economic context in which the Directive operates provides the necessary background for a

comprehensive understanding of the various elements affecting gender disparities and

therefore for the role of the Directive’s provisions in the reinforcement of the gender equality

principle in matters of statutory social security.

3 EVALUATION QUESTIONS AND EVALUATION CRITERIA

Nine evaluati on questions, clustered according to the REFIT evaluation cri teria (effectiveness,

relevance, efficiency, coherence, and sustainability and European added value), have been

identified in order to properly assess the Directive. They are r ecalled in the Box below.

Box 4 - Evaluation questions

Effectiveness

EQ1: How do the observed effects correspond to the objectives of the Directive?

EQ2: What elements contributed to the achievement of the objectives?

EQ3: What elements prevented or hampered the achievement of the objectives?

Relevance

EQ4: How well do the objectives of the Directive still correspond to the needs in the Member States?

Efficiency

EQ5: To what extent were the costs resulting from the implementation of the Directive proportionate to

the results and benefits?

Coherence

EQ6: How well is the approach taken by the Directive to ensure equality between men and women and

to combat discrimination based on sex coherent with the approach taken by the EU in other areas

of social security (covered by Directive 2006/54/EC and Directive 2004/113/EC)?

Sustainability and European added value

EQ7: What would be the consequences of repealing the Directive?

29 Commission Recommendation (2014/124/EU) on strengthening the principle of equal pay between men and women

through transparency. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32014H0124&from=EN