In Monday 5 October’s plenary MEPs reiterated their desire to see a resumption of the negotiations on the draft Women on Boards directive (see EUROPE 12564/17).
This text, which aimed to introduce a requirement for 40% of women on company boards in the private and public sectors, had been backed by Parliament as early as 2013, but remains blocked in the EU Council.
“States are afraid, afraid of losing their voters, and are not assuming their responsibilities”, denounced Samira Rafaela (Renew Europe, Netherlands), saying that invoking the principle of subsidiarity was just a pretext to block the text, which leaves “a lot of room for manoeuvre” for companies.
“The Commission does not intend to impose binding quotas. It is calling for a transparent selection procedure to be put in place in large European companies listed on the stock exchange”, said Commissioner for Equality Helena Dalli.
Evelyn Regner (S&D, Austria), chair of the European Parliament’s Women’s Rights Committee, insisted on the need to impose binding targets.
“Countries with binding quotas have about 10% more women on boards than in countries with only voluntary measures”, she detailed.
Angelika Niebler (EPP, Germany), for her part, asked Ms Dalli about the means available to the Commission to respond to States’ reservations on the legal basis (see EUROPE 11104/12).
“Clarification on legal basis will always be provided and we continuously engage with member states. It’s a question of will”, the Commissioner replied.
Discordant voices
Only the female members of the ID and ECR groups spoke out strongly against the implementation of the directive.
Christine Anderson (ID, Germany) said the Commission was acting in the name of “political correctness” and noted that the EU was already “struggling to compete with those countries that spare themselves such crazy ideas”.
Margarita de la Pisa Carrión (ECR, Spain) said “The European institutions are constantly threatening us to impose ideologies on us”.
The Presidency dodges the issue
For his part, Michael Roth, German State Secretary for European Affairs, was careful not to elaborate on the issue of the directive.
He agreed that the “glass ceiling must be broken” and drew MEPs’ attention to the “insufficient” proportion of women in the European Parliament (38%).
He also assured listeners that the German EU Council Presidency would continue its efforts on gender equality in the coming weeks and announced that the issue of gender equality in the labour market would be on the agenda of the meeting of labour ministers on 13 October.
Mr Roth also flagged up the informal meeting of EU Gender Equality Ministers in Potsdam in November (see EUROPE 12520/7), a first! (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)