The date has been set: November 22, 2022. And the day will be “special” for Luxembourg’s Viviane Reding, the Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, who launched the proposal for a directive on November 14, 2012 Women on boards – parity at European companies. The idea of the former vice president in the “Barroso Commission”, the second, was “devalued and stopped” for more than a decade. In a month everything will change.
“There will certainly be a party. And maybe a champagne. Let’s have a toast. Viviane has already said that she will be here, in the European Parliament, to watch the last step of her idea, which has been blocked for so long,” says Maria da Graça Carvalho, who has been rapporteur for the past three years for a project that will “finally” take the legal form of a directive.
“It is difficult for me to say,” confesses the PSD MEP, “but it was the German government, namely Mrs Merkel, who even belongs to my political area, that prevented the proposal from going through”.
Socialist MEP Maria Manuel Leitão Marques agrees, “regrets” and adds that “this was only unblocked with the new German government. The Nordic states, especially Germany, believed that this should be done through internal negotiations in each country between businessmen, trade unions, etc., which was not an issue to be harmonized at European level. They agreed with the idea, but not with the method”.
It was from the “French Presidency, with Mr Macron, who had bet to have a concrete result, that things got moving. And there was, it is important to point out,” says Maria da Graça Carvalho, “an interesting combination of efforts the President of the European Commission, the President of the European Parliament, a group of women MPs, rapporteurs from both the Legal Service and the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality.
“For years, some countries have said that ‘now is not the time’, ‘now we are in a crisis’, there was always something. For everything to do with these gender issues and women’s rights, there are always excuses,” the statement said. social-democratic MEP.
“Ten years shows a lot of the importance attached to the problem,” added Maria Manuel Leitão Marques.
Sara Falcão Casaca, associate professor at ISEG-UL aggregation, postdoctoral researcher in the project Women in the Management Bodies of Companies: an integrated approach, which coordinated the White Paper: Balancing women and men in corporate governance and plans for equality believes that “10 years of deadlock is a long time. Parity could already be a reality in corporate governance bodies in the European Union if the proposal had reached consensus at the time it was presented. In most countries of the Union European Union, the proportion of women on company boards does not exceed 30% and in four it is less than 15%, June 2022 data. positive action (commonly known as quota) of a legislative nature and mandatory compliance, with a associated sanctions framework, which has made the most progress towards a better balance between women and men in these bodies”.
Maria da Graça Carvalho acknowledges that she would like the result to be more ambitious, but we all agreed that it is better to achieve something, which then improves, than to continue with nothing. It was this pragmatism that made it possible to reach an agreement with the Council. Of course we have more ambitious goals, but we had to compromise on a number of points.”
Socialist Maria Manuel Leitão Marques, for her part, admits that she is “not happy that this is happening, that the result is not ideal, but I understand that there are ways to go further. It would be more difficult if we were demanding. “
Social Democrat MEP Maria da Graça Carvalho confesses that the goal was “naturally” to achieve “a higher percentage, especially in managerial positions, but it was already very good that we managed to place the word “executive” because it was initially not. great achievement,” he says.
And the difference is here: “At least 33% of women in leadership positions on the boards of publicly traded companies.”
“The historic moment, which will be remembered in the future as a milestone in the fight against gender discrimination in the European Union”, as Maria da Graça Carvalho says, also introduces the “minimum target, subject to sanctions in case of non compliance with at least 40% of the seats of non-executive directors of listed companies”.
This European obligation, which after final approval in the European Parliament and publication in the Official Journal of the European Union will still have to undergo the “transposition of the Directive into the Portuguese legal system” and an adjustment period of two years, has set a deadline: June 30 2026. From this day on, “there will be no more excuses,” says Maria da Graça Carvalho.
There is one sector in particular, “the SAD of football clubs, a world of men”, which the Social Democratic rapporteur of this directive considers “very interesting” to follow, because of the “cultural change” that “will have happened” with law enforcement violence.
“A lot will have to change in four years,” said Maria da Graça Carvalho. Maria Manuel Leitão Marques hopes that “this change will bring changes” in “a sector that is so masculine” and with “so many problems and controversies that we are witnessing. Sometimes the presence of women can be the cultural lever”. Or, as Elza Pais says, “There is only fair transition, change and development when there is equality.”
the Portuguese case
“Portugal doesn’t even have to try very hard, just amend the Portuguese law, Law No. 62/2017, which is already very advanced,” said Elza Pais, president of the Socialist Women’s organization.
The “regime of balanced representation between women and men” defined that for the public sector of business “the proportion of people of each gender assigned to each administrative and supervisory body of each company” as of January 1, not “less than 33, 3% per year may be”. 2018″ and for publicly traded companies, it placed the “proportion of people of any gender reappointed for each administrative and supervisory body of any company” at a level “not less than 20%, from the first elective general meeting after January 1, 2018 and 33.3%, from the first elective general meeting after January 1, 2020”, left a “void” in Elza Pais’s reading.
“We passed the law because self-regulation didn’t work, but we didn’t clearly define whether it was for executives and non-executives. This uncertainty persisted,” said the Socialist Women’s chairman.
“In January, we put this question to António Costa, who has committed to investigating this issue. The 2017 law was good, but women were pushed into non-executive positions. The law needed to be revised. “We have the obligation of the directive for listed companies and we have to do the same in the state-owned sector. There are two dimensions in our legislation. It makes no sense to change one, that of listed companies, without changing the other, which of the state affairs sector.”
Elza Pais praises the European directive, which “came in the direction of our claims”, guaranteeing that “soon”, with “our deputies, we will move forward with a proposal in this sense. Government proposal, it will be seen soon. We have a very great openness, expressed by António Costa”.
Sara Falcão Casaca emphasizes that “we must keep in mind that the directive is also valid for the symbolic impact and the potential for contamination”, but warns that “Law No. 03% of the Portuguese business universe, but it started a path, brought the subject to the public space and made it possible to show that women are available and with all the skills for the positions in question”.
And “now,” she argues, like Elza Pais, “it’s time to extend this coverage.” The team that drafted the White Paper “proposed to extend the mandatory minimum thresholds for a balanced representation of women and men to the governing bodies of all companies of a relevant size (for the next first three years: entities employing 250 or more employees) ; according to triennium: entities employing 100 or more employees)”.
In other words, “it is time to aim for the minimum parity threshold (40%), in line with the guideline, and fulfill both executive and non-executive functions”, not least because “in local business the the level of non-compliance is high. And surprisingly, the regulation of the law missed the reprimand (provided in the law as a sanction for non-compliance) in the case of this last sector”.
Source: DN
