Gender equality is a fundamental value of the European Union (EU).The EU has committed to furthering gender equality, including through its external financing. The EU Strategic Approach to Women, Peace and Security calls for gender analysis, gender mainstreaming of programs and gender sensitive evaluation in EU external action financing. The EU Gender Action Plan (GAP) II also calls for gender analysis to inform all programming, for gender mainstreaming programming and for evaluating achievements towards gender equality. However, as a Staff Working Document, GAP II is not legally binding and responsible parties have not taken it as seriously as an EU regulation.Therefore, gender has not been mainstreamed in programming as part of a standardized, institutionalized approach.

KWN Proposals for New Common Implementing Regulation_2019-12-03 (1)