At the current pace, the European Union is at least 60 years away from achieving gender equality, according to Robert Biedroń, the Chair of the Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee in the European Parliament.

“We cannot wait another 60 years,” Biedroń warned.

The European Parliament has made significant strides towards gender equality in the last year, including a landmark approval to boost representation on corporate boards and a deal on binding pay transparency measures.

However, there has been a “worrisome phenomenon”, a backlash against women’s rights both in Europe and around the world, particularly when it comes to sexual and reproductive health and rights.

“The decision of the US Supreme Court to renounce the federal constitutional right to abortion has transformed the lives of women and girls across the US, disproportionately affecting women in vulnerable situations,” Biedroń, who is also an LGBT activist said.

“With the recent de facto abortion ban in Poland and limitations on sexual and reproductive health and rights in other EU countries, tackling the erosion of sexual and reproductive health rights is a matter of urgency.”

“All European women should be able to enjoy the same rights.”

Poland, like Malta, has some of the strictest abortion laws on the planet, has cracked down on reproductive rights under the right-wing ruling party in the last few years.

In 2020, the country passed an anti-abortion ruling, in which the country’s politically compromised Constitutional Tribunal held that abortion in the case of severe and irreversible foetal defect or incurable illness that threatens the fetus’s life was unconstitutional.

In Malta, abortion is a criminal offence and is illegal under every circumstance.

There has been some progress on the island. A bill was passed that would allow pregnant people to terminate if their lives were at risk. However, protests from pro-life camps argue that it may open the gates to the full legalisation of abortion, and politicians have hinted that the bill scrutinized with amendments.