Fireside Chat with Samira Rafaela, Co-Architect of the EU Pay Transparency Directive

Samira Rafaela

Co-architect of the EU Pay Transparency Directive, former European Parliament Member, and Syndio Advisory Board Member

Samira Rafaela has been a Member of the European Parliament from 2019 to 2024. She was the first Dutch Member of European Parliament with Afro-Caribbean roots ever elected. In the European Parliament, Samira was a Member of the Committee on International Trade, Committee on Women’s rights and Gender Equality, Committee on Employment and Social Affairs and Committee on Human Rights. She studied Public Administration at Leiden University in The Netherlands and has a master’s degree in Crisis and Security Management. She graduated on the topic of Radicalization and Terrorism. Before she became a Member of European Parliament, she worked at The Netherlands Police in the Commissioner’s staff, where she was responsible for the national Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategy.

As a member of the International Trade Committee in the European Parliament, she has made trade policies more gender-sensitive, fair, and progressive. Samira was the Parliament’s lead negotiator for the new ground breaking EU law against forced labor, known as the Forced Labor Ban, combating forced labor within the EU and in relation to products imported into the EU market. She was also the rapporteur on the ground- breaking Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive for the Committee on Employment and Social affairs. As standing rapporteur for the Trade agreement with Chile, she effectively advocated for the first dedicated EU Gender and Trade chapter on behalf of the European Parliament. For Samira, the economic empowerment of women and the inclusion of a gender and human rights lens in EU trade policy are key issues to create a fairer world, and so is an equal trade relation with Africa and Latin America.

In 2020, Samira was selected as Politico Europe’s one of the 20 MEPs to watch 2020 for her contribution to making trade more green and fair. In 2024 the MEP Influence Index mentioned Samira as one of the most influential MEPs in the area of trade and social policies in the full mandate of ’19-’24.

She was also the lead negotiator on the new EU Pay Transparency directive. This directive aims to promote transparency and fairness in pay by requiring EU companies to disclose information about their pay practices, including gender pay gaps. In 2020 she won the Harper’s Bazaar International Woman of the Year Award for her efforts for economic and social independence of women in Europe. In general she has championed SRHR rights for women. One result of that was a SRHR strategy to protect bodily autonomy of women in Europe. Samira launched her ‘Let’s Talk About Our Bodies’ initiative aimed at addressing menstrual health and Women’s health in general. She has worked on a manifesto together with Global and European experts and organizations and based on the outcomes of expert round tables, she managed to raise awareness in Europe and encourage the medical community to prioritize this topic. The Manifesto was presented to the EU Commissioner of Equality in June 2024 during Samira’s event together with the European Public Health Alliance, DSW International and the European Institute of Women’s Health, that was co-hosted by UN Women Brussels.

In 2016 she completed the Transatlantic Inclusion Leaders Network program of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She is now a nonresident Visiting Fellow at the Cornell University Global Labor Institute, where she works on her expertise—forced labor and corporate accountability and geopolitical developments influencing the global labor governance system.