COUNCIL for PARITY DEMOCRACY s1

E E COUNCIL for PARITY DEMOCRACY ______

19 Mulready House Herrick Street Westminster London England SW1P 4JL Tel & Fax + 44 20 7834 1309 Mobile + 44 79 32 79 44 32 Email shequality @ gmail.com www.shequality.org Honorary Secretary Raymond Lloyd

QUESTIONS on DEMOCRACY & WOMEN'S ADVANCEMENT in CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE European Bank (EBRD) 14th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors Belgrade 22-23 May 2005 @ Raymond Lloyd

Date Place Occasion Person Addressed, Office & Country *PD #Followup

23. 5.05 Belgrade European Bank Giuliano Amato De Larosiere Lecturer PD " " " " (3) Jean Lemierre President European Bank PD EB2005 " " " " (2) Karl-Heinz Grasser Minister of Finance Austria PD EB2005 " " " " EBRD Law in Transition roundtable PD EB2005 " " " " Michael O'Leary CEO Ryanair Ireland PD EB2005 22. 5.05 " " " EBRD Panel on Women in Business & Government PD EB2005 " " " " Regina Prehofer Member Managing Board Bank Austria PD EB2005 " " " " Claus-Peter Zeitinger Chair ProCredit Frankfurt PD EB2005

QUESTIONS

23. 5.05 Belgrade European Bank Giuliano Amato De Larosiere Lecturer PD One major mistake made by democratic politicians with the collapse of communism was to attempt to preserve the geographical status quo, for example in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, without appreciating that such entities had been held together only by totalitarian brutality: this mistake is still being perpetuated in parts of the Balkans, instead of allowing the Srpska Republic to link up with a newly democratic Serbia, and for most of Kosova to do the same with democratic Albania, which would have distinct political advantages, such that democratic Serbia will take responsibility for the war criminals who massacred 7000 Moslem men and boys in Srebenica in 1995, and Albania for the persecutors of the Serbian minority in Kosova, which has now almost been reduced to a criminal state, living on drugs, arms and people trafficking and EU and UN handouts: will you, as Chair of the International Commission on the Balkans, be tough enough to recommend such a policy?

23. 5.05 Belgrade European Bank (3) Jean Lemierre President European Bank PD EB2005 In July 2003 UNDP set up a highlevel Commission on the Private Sector & Development, two of whose 16 members were women CEOs, Anne Lauvergeon of COGEMA in France and, someone who has since lost her job, Carly Fiorina of Hewlett Packard who, in November 2003, received the Seeds of Hope humanitarian award: if you can not invite Carly to be the incoming US Vice-President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, can you ask her to become an EBRD Goodwill Ambassador, to encourage both the hundreds of thousands of aspiring businesswomen in eastern Europe, and the 6 women among the 30 directors on the EBRD staff; Or, returning to France, this year is the 200th anniversary of a French businesswomen taking over and transforming the champagne industry, the 26-year-old widow Nicole Clicquot-Ponsardin: today Veuve Clicquot is again headed by an outstanding woman CEO, Cecile Bonnefond, who also runs a Business Woman of the Year program in 18 countries: could not someone of her calibre also become an EBRD Goodwill Ambassador?

Whatever the geographical designation of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the EBRD, substantively, is a post-communist reconstruction bank: there are still 5 communist regimes in the world, one of which may well collapse with the death of its eighty-year-old dictator: now that the EBRD may soon withdraw from new operations in the 8 central European countries which in May 2004 joined the European Union, will the bank make its invaluable experience available to, say, a post-communist Cuba? ------* PD denotes the writer's accreditation as editor of the Westminster-based, 1997-founded, monthly newsletter The Parity Democrat (ISSN 1367-6946). The questions are extracted from A Ninth 100 Questions on Democracy and A Seventh 100 Questions on Women's Advancement asked at head-of-government and similar meetings in 2004-2005. Questions were asked live. # EB2005 denotes the foregoing 9-page paper (A-D) distributed as background at the meeting and, like all previous 8 European Bank papers, is downloadable free from www.shequality.org , by clicking on Conference Papers.

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Date Place Occasion Person Addressed, Office & Country PD Followup

23. 5.05 Belgrade European Bank (2) Jean Lemierre President European Bank PD EB2005 In the 1970s the Council of Europe suspended the membership of Greece when it became a military dictatorship: in the English language, one definition of a massacre is the murder of ten or more people: to save anxious deliberations in future (as now over Uzbekistan), could the EBRD establish a rule that, as soon as a government murders ten of its citizens, it is automatically suspended from bank membership until the bereaved families are fully compensated?

23. 5.05 Belgrade European Bank Karl-Heinz Grasser Minister of Finance Austria PD EB2005 On 10 December 2005 Austria and Europe will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Bertha von Suttner, the peace campaigner who inspired Nobel to create the prize, and the woman who is portrayed on Austria's 2 euro coin [and soon on a 10 euro coin of Germany]: for several years I have been asking both Austrian foreign ministers and Austrian banks whether you will use this centenary to institute a Nobel von Suttner Prize, for outstanding work in the fields either of humanitarianism or women's advancement, the UN headquarters of which was once in Vienna: is Austria making progress with this proposal?

In 18 months' time, in November 2006, Austria will celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of the most courageous and generous acts in recent European history, the welcome into Austria, barely one year after communist troops left Vienna, of some 200 000 Hungarians fleeing soviet totalitarianism: four years ago, for the 45th anniversary, the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban stated at two European summits, that he would invite back to Hungary the 70- 80-year-old Red Cross and other workers who helped resettle his countrywomen and men: Orban did not live up to his promises: in Vienna in 1956 I was the youngest Red Cross worker: on the 50th anniversary I will be 72: whatever Hungary does, will Austria welcome back the international aid workers, 80-90-year-olds though they may be, who helped Austria implement your act of courage and generosity in 1956?

23. 5.05 Belgrade European Bank EBRD Law in Transition roundtable PD EB2005 Do women or girls suffer any legal discrimination in central and eastern Europe, whether as shareholders, property owners, or inheritance beneficiaries?

23. 5.05 Belgrade European Bank Michael O'Leary CEO Ryanair Ireland PD EB2005 As someone who came to this EBRD meeting in Belgrade with Ryanair, to Venice and then on by rail, and who uses Ryanair about ten times a year to attend European meetings, may I first congratulate you, Michael O'Leary, on helping make my body as mobile as Google has made my mind: on 1 January 2004, at the beginning of the Irish presidency of the European Union, I emailed you to ask whether Ryanair will take this opportunity to begin flights to all eight new EU members from central Europe: now I would ask how soon does Ryanair hope to fly into other great European cities, such as Istanbul, Moscow and St Petersburg?

22. 5.05 Belgrade European Bank EBRD Panel on Women in Business & Government PD EB2005 In London last year I offered this meeting my list of names of 1200 women leaders throughout the world, including ministers of finance and governors of central banks: since then I have added the names of some forty women CEOs. Also from the Home page of my website www.shequality.org you may now download the names of 5000 able women, from 130 democracies (a 94-page download), who, over 25 years, I have circularized for leadership positions in national and international organizations.

For these 2005 Annual Meetings, I have prepared a paper, also downloadable from my site, naming the 35 Slovenian women in my list, along with illustrations of banknotes portraying distinguished women of history and circulating in eastern Europe. When the Euro coins were introduced in 2002, only one, the 2 euros of Austria, portrayed such a distinguished woman, Bertha von Suttner, the centenary of whose receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize we celebrate on 10 December 2005: may I now ask all the women bankers here to make sure that other distinguished women of history are portrayed on the new euro coins soon to be minted for central and eastern Europe?

22. 5.05 Belgrade European Bank Regina Prehofer Member Managing Board Bank Austria PD EB2005 Will Bank Austria use the opportunity of Austria holding the presidency of the European Union in the first six months of 2006 to expand your work in central and eastern Europe?

22. 5.05 Belgrade European Bank Claus-Peter Zeitinger Chair ProCredit Frankfurt PD EB2005 Now that 25 years' experience has shown that women are the most numerous and most reliable beneficiaries of micro-credit loans, may I ask how many of ProCredit's 7000 staff are women [ 80 percent], and how many women are on ProCredit's Board [ 4 of 9]? Also when my friend Millie Leet began her Trickle-Up Program in 1979, her smallest loan was $10, for an ice-cream scoop to start a business: what today is ProCredit's smallest loan [$100]?