Brussels, 03/12/2015 (Agence Europe) - The Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the EU is working to pull out all the stops in order to obtain a general approach on the directive setting out quotas for women at the Employment and Social affairs Council on 7 December.
On Wednesday 2 December, it got the go-ahead from the Czech Republic, which previously opposed the idea of a directive. The Luxembourg Minister for Employment and the Social economy, Nicolas Schmit, acknowledged that this support was, however, far from sufficient. During the European Parliament plenary session on Wednesday 2 December, he indicated that “all the member states support the general objective of the directive. Nonetheless, the text is still the subject of a minority blockage”. Schmit stated that he did not want to try and anticipate the result of the discussions on 7 December, “but I can tell you that the recent debates at the Committee of Permanent Representatives to the EU (Coreper) have not been encouraging… The Luxembourg Presidency will do whatever possible, even a little bit more but I cannot give the guarantees of everyone else”.
The member states opposing the text are the United Kingdom, Denmark, Estonia, Croatia, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and Slovakia. Ten countries in all, of which two will be the next forthcoming rotating Presidencies of the Council (the Netherlands and Slovakia).
Proposal and compromise on the table. The draft directive presented three years ago suggests a 40% quota of women for non-executive posts on the boards of directors in major European companies. It also calls for companies quoted on the stock exchange to introduce transparent recruiting procedures by 2020, in order to guarantee that women as an underrepresented gender are sufficiently taken into account, on the basis of equal merit.
The most recent casting of the Luxembourg compromise includes more flexibility: it stipulates, for example, a 33% target for member states that choose to apply this objective to their executive administrative positions (and not just to non-executive directors). It also introduces a flexibility clause, which will allow member states to attempt to attain the directive targets by the means they interpret appropriate and suspend the procedural requirements in the directive until 2022. This will apply as long as the states have already taken effective measures or achieved progress that enable them to make progress towards the quantitative targets set out in the directive. The compromise includes three scenarios that allow for this exemption: (1) national legislation stipulates that members of the underrepresented gender occupy at least 30% of non-executive administrative posts or at least 25% of all executive posts by 31 December 2020 at the latest and that effective implementing measures, which are proportionate and dissuasive, apply in the event of these requirements not being respected; (2) members of the underrepresented gender occupy at least 30% of the total number of all non-executive administrative posts or at least 25% of the total number of all executive administrative posts; (3) members of the underrepresented gender occupy at least 25% of the total number of all non-executive administrative post or 20% of the total number of administrative posts and that the level of representation is increased by at least 7.5% during a recent five-year period that expires before the date limit of implementation.
The text also allows for a certain amount of flexibility for member states whose national legislation includes binding quantitative objectives that do not apply to all companies quoted on the stock exchange but which are included in the directive's scope.
During the plenary session debate, MEPs called on the Council to step up to the plate on 7 December. Only a few ECR MEPs (Daniela Aiuto, Italy), ELDD (Diane James, Great Britain) and ENL (Gianluca Buonanno, Italy) rejected the idea of a proposal on quotas for women. See: http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-14343-2015-INIT/fr/pdf (Original version in French Sophie Petitjean)