Company board members are influential: they set business strategy, oversee how a firm is managed, and appoint or replace the chief executive and other senior staff who run the business.
Do you need an EU law to get more women in those seats? It certainly helps – in some countries more than others.
In France, 45% of board members are women, Hedwige Nuyens, the chair of advocacy group European Women on Boards, told The European Correspondent. “It's a no-brainer; everyone expects women to be on a board,“ she said. “If you only tap into half of the talent pool, you will not end up with the best people.“
In 2022, the EU set a target for at least 40% of non-executive board members, or 33% of directors of large listed companies, to be women by June 2026.
While the EU has hit the target for directors, it's been slower to hit the 40% minimum for board members. The most recent statistics from October 2025 show an EU average of 33.6%.
Three member states did reach the 40% target last year: France, Italy, and the Netherlands. All have binding quotas for women on company boards, with sanctions for companies that don't comply. Belgium and Germany are close behind.
Now for the bad news: seven member states still haven't written the EU targets into their national law, including Hungary and Cyprus, where women hold just 11% of board seats. In April, the European Commission sent all those countries legal warnings, which could escalate to a lawsuit and fines if they don't act.
Across the EU, there are 12 member states with laws that don't penalise companies if they fail to appoint more women.
Still, it's progress, said Carlien Scheele, the director of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), which is responsible for collecting the EU-wide statistics.
“The Gender Balance on Corporate Boards Directive has helped move women into boardrooms faster than we have seen for many years,” she said in an email.
Nuyens said countries that had “firm objectives with sanctions all made big progress.” Countries with more women on boards also tend to have more women in business leadership positions in general.
Despite “backlash and backsliding everywhere in the world,” she said, the EU quota makes it harder for European businesses to reverse course, even with more conservative politicians in power than when the law was passed in 2022.
Many US companies, for example, are scaling back their efforts. Axing US government programmes promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion was a priority for president Donald Trump.
But Europe is no paradise. In a speech she gave in June, Scheele said evidence shows “that the highest levels of corporate decision-making power remain overwhelmingly male.”
“The real test now is whether this momentum extends beyond non-executive appointments into executive leadership, where the biggest decisions are made,” she said.
Only one in ten of the people who lead a company board as chairperson are female, according to EIGE. Fewer than 10% of CEOs are women.
That could change fast in countries willing to set targets for those jobs. France wants 30% of top management positions to be held by women by 2027, rising to 40% by 2030.