EU plans to enshrine female director quota in law - paper
BERLIN |
BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Commission plans to introduce a law which will force firms to increase the number of women on their boards, German financial daily Handelsblatt said on Thursday.
European Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding wants to submit a draft directive in October, the paper said, citing sources familiar with the matter.
The law would make it mandatory for listed companies to ensure that women fill at least 40 percent of positions on their boards by 2020.
The Commission is currently evaluating the implications of the planned law, the paper added.
In March Reding started a three-month consultation on imposed quotas, a year after she called on companies to take voluntary steps to increase the number of women on their boards.
(Reporting by Michelle Martin, editing by Gareth Jones)
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[Using a common market-based measure of corporate governance, known as Tobin’s Q, the study found that companies in Norway actually performed an average of 20 percent worse the year after adopting the quotas, with those companies that were required to make the most drastic changes to their boards suffering the largest negative impact.]
Being competitive does not feature highly in the EU political agenda.
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