Brussels - European women should be given longer and better-paid maternity leave and be allowed to ask for flexible working hours when they return to work, the European Union's executive body said Friday.

"Only 65.5 per cent of women with dependent children are in work, compared with 91.7 per cent of men. Our proposals to improve maternity leave will help women to combine work and family life," EU equal-opportunities commissioner Vladimir Spidla said.

"They should also help increase women's participation in the labour market and help face up to the challenges of demographic ageing," he noted.

In its proposal for revisions to an existing EU-wide law, the Brussels-based EU executive called for the minimum period of maternity leave allowed to women to be extended from 14 to 18 weeks, and recommended that member states guarantee them their full salary while they are attending to their newborn babies.

Women should also be given more control over whether they take their leave before or after delivery, removing any demands that they take a set amount of leave before birth and insisting only that they take at least six weeks' leave afterwards.

At present, practices in the EU vary widely, with German women given 14 weeks' paid leave (a mandatory six before birth and eight after), Italians given 22 weeks, and Latvians receiving up to
10 weeks before birth, 10 weeks after, a year on full pay and another six months on reduced pay.

The proposal also called on member states to "prohibit all preparations for a possible dismissal not related to exceptional circumstances during the maternity leave," strengthening the current law, which only prohibits actual dismissal during maternity leave.

It insisted that women be allowed to return to the same job or an equivalent one "on terms and conditions which are no less favourable."

The new mother should also have "the right to benefit from any improvement in working conditions to which she would have been entitled during her absence" and to ask for flexible, child-friendly working hours - though the employer is not obliged to accept this.

EU member states are growing increasingly concerned by the bloc's low birth rates and ageing population - factors which are already putting national pension schemes under strain.

The EU therefore wants to make it easier and more attractive for women to work and raise families.

The proposals came on the back of a commission report saying that EU member states are not doing enough to provide daytime child care.

The proposals presented on Friday have to be approved by member states and the European Parliament before they can come into force. (dpa)