Mrs Kostadinka KUNEVA, the rapporteur on the EP's Report on "Women Domestic Workers and Carers in the EU", organised a debate and the screening of the film "At Home", on February 25th, in the European Parliament in Brussels Konstadinka Kuneva - SYRIZA MEP We worked and we managed to place many proposals in the report that was adopted. First of all, I would like to tell you that we succeeded to have an important amendment passed that is requesting the adoption of legislative and non-legislative measures to regulate women's occupations and women workers or caregivers in the EU. We call upon the European Comission and the Member-States to engage in a series of actions. The domestic work and caring should be recognized as real professions. These workers must be fully covered by the social care benefits and labour rights, as every employee has that right. They should not be socially excluded, they should have access to education, and appropriate checks by the Working Committees and other Supervising Authorities, which are necessary in order to eliminate exploitation, abuse and violence - the abuse of domestic workers. Dimitrios Papadimoulis - EU Parliament Vice-President Here we have an important report that claims something that should be obvious. To legitimise the work that takes place at home in order to take care of persons or to have domestic aid, which is done by millions of people, their vast majority are women, that are undeclared. And undeclared work means work without rights. The following film will tell a story that illustrates the consequences of this. I would not like to bore you with numbers, but I'll just say that I hope Konstantina's report, adopted by the Women's Commission -for the rights of women- of the European Parliament, will be adopted with the same or even greater majority at the Plenary of the European Parliament as well. Athanasios Karanikola, Editor & Director of the film "AT HOME" Women that firstly came from Albania, afterwards from Bulgaria, later from Russia, Georgia, and used to work in Greek houses, Greek gardens, Greek hotel industries etc. Women who were somehow invisible but nevertheless very present in Greek society offering undeclared work, poorly paid, dirty, jobs that the Greek women in the 50s - 60s, once did, women mainly from the countryside, young girls that they used to work for bourgeois families in Athens or at other urban centres. Nowadays, these kinds of jobs are done by foreign women, immigrant mothers, single women that came to Greece, looking for a better life; women very often educated, that had to take a very important task. So I decided to tell that story because I have family abroad, in Australia, many women who also left looking for a better life in the 60s and 70s. And that's how I decided that I would like to make a film for all these women workers abroad. Kerstin Howald - EFFAT Secretary What our demands, our activities with regards to domestic workers first of all, we think that is very important that the EU should encourage the member-states to ratified this ILO Convection 189, as they did already in 2013 Commissioner European Parliament but also we think that the European Institutions have to look into existing European legislation and where it's containing any discriminatory policies again domestic workers before, and since now in the health and safety directive that there are domestic workers explicitly excluded. So, I think this is also very important that they -you know- we screen all the European legislations to make sure that the domestic workers are not discriminated by this. Aurelie Decker, EFSI Director The main challenge of the sector I would say is prevalence of undeclared work. We can conclude from the latest European Survey on the issue that there are approximately 7 million Europeans which both on clean services on the undeclared market, 2.3 million Europeans are buying own baby-sitting services; 1.4 million Europeans are buying assistance for elderly and dependent people. So this is really an emerging problem and a problem which will continue to increase in the coming years, because as you know we are facing some demographic challenges, we have an aging population, they will be more and more needs for care services, more and more women are working which is good, but on the other way, they need more helps to be able to balance their private and professional life. So, we are in the context, we are in the sector we have this "eye prevalence" of undeclared work and in the same way increasing demand and luck of sufficient and food supply. Video - Vasileios Katsardis

• published: 29 Feb 2016
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