The EU’s internal market will suffer if companies do not put more women on their boards, the EU’s gender equality commissioner Viviane Reding said Tuesday (11 July).
Reding made the claim while standing alongside Chantal Gaemperle, a board member at French luxury label LVMH, who had just signed an EU-sponsored pledge to increase the number of women in the company.
The commissioner said that come March next year she will look to see whether companies have made a “clear, precise and measurable evolution” towards greater gender balance within their walls.
“If yes, there will be no need for European legislation. If no, we will have a problem with the internal market,” said the commissioner explaining that major companies who work across the EU will be confronted with different national laws on women quotas.
Reding’s thinking is that if there is a public procurement tender in Spain, for example, Spanish companies who already have to oblige by national quota laws will have an immediate advantage over a German company, which does not.
France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy all have national rules concerning the representation of women in business.
The commissioner, who wants to boost female boardroom positions to 30 percent by 2015 and to 40 percent by 2020, said she is “completely supported” by internal market commissioner Michel Barnier.
