The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) is an autonomous body of the European Union, established to contribute to and strengthen the promotion of gender equality, including gender mainstreaming in all EU policies and the resulting national policies, and the fight against discrimination based on sex, as well as to raise EU citizens’ awareness of gender equality.

As an autonomous body, EIGE operates within the framework of European Union policies and initiatives. The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union defined the grounds for the Institute’s objectives and  tasks in its Founding Regulation and assigned it the central role of addressing  the challenges of and promoting equality between women and men across the European Union.

To support better-informed policy-making EIGE contributes to the promotion of gender equality in Europe through delivering high-level expertise to the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Member States and Enlargement countries.

2016-2018 Key objectives and priorities
EIGE's three strategic objectives for the programming period 2016 to 2018 are as follows:

• To provide high quality research and data to support better informed and evidence based decision-making by policymakers and other key stakeholders working to achieve gender equality;
• To manage all knowledge produced by EIGE to enable timely and innovative communication that meets the targeted needs of key stakeholders;
• To meet the highest administrative and financial standards while supporting the needs of EIGE's personnel.