The European Commission has announced that private companies will now have to respect so-called gender balance norms.
In a post on X on January 3 the EC said the new rules were designed to improve “gender balance” on corporate boards and would apply across the European Union.
By June 30, 2026, members of what the body called “the underrepresented sex” must hold at least 40 per cent of non-executive director positions and one-third of all director positions.
Listed companies across the EU now have 18 months to enforce the rules.
New rules to improve gender balance in corporate boards now apply across the EU.
By 30 June 2026, members of the underrepresented sex must hold at least:
🔹 40% of non-executive director positions
🔹 33% of all director positions pic.twitter.com/C4aiQ2A8OT— European Commission (@EU_Commission) January 3, 2025
According to the EC, these regulations will “unlock the potential of women to drive growth and innovation, bringing more balance to listed companies’ boards across the EU”.
It was claimed that “gender balance is about fairness for all”.
When EC President Ursula von der Leyen was forming her second Commission, she publicly stated she wanted full gender-parity within the body.
She has failed to achieve that goal.
In fact, EU member states proposed so few females for roles that for some time it appeared she would only achieve 26 per cent of women in her EC.
Only after much wrangling and compromises did von der Leyen manage to reach 40 per cent representation for women. Despite that, it was still worse than the previous EC, which had some 44 per cent of females making up the body.
According to the EC’s own numbers, the share of women on corporate boards was already at 34 per cent on average in the EU.
European directives state that a candidate of the underrepresented sex – in the case of equally qualified candidates of both sexes – should be preferred.
They demand the disclosure of qualification criteria if requested by an unsuccessful candidate and individual commitments from listed companies to reach gender balance among executive directors.
They also call for reporting on the composition of boards and possible obstacles to meet targets of the directives, where applicable, and that action be taken to overcome these.
In addition, member states must have in place penalties for companies failing to comply with the obligations.
The European legislation is fully focused on the male/female divide but did not mention gender self-identification, despite that being a growing issue and the EU itself regularly calling for more attention to be paid to it.
When asked by Brussels Signal why this was not reflected in the gender-balance rules, an EC spokesperson indicated on January 8 that it was a national matter.
“The directive on improving the gender balance among directors of companies listed on stock exchanges aims at addressing a statistically evidenced problem of underrepresentation of women in the management boards of large, listed companies,” the spokesperson said.
“This Directive is without prejudice to any national legislation on gender recognition and to relevant EU case law on gender reassignment.
“Member states are also free to undertake positive action regarding non-binary persons.”
