200 Polish WSE-listed companies will need to appoint new boards to achieve 33 pct gender parity

Around 200 companies on the Warsaw trading floor will have to change their management and supervisory boards in order to achieve 33 percent gender parity. Poland's Ministry of Justice has sent a draft of a relevant law for consultation.

"The proposed Article 90gg sets out a minimum percentage of persons of a certain gender on a company's management and supervisory boards. In the provision of Article 5, the directive leaves it to the member states to choose the specific parities that regulated companies will be required to meet," the justice ministry wrote.

These specific parities include having the underrepresented gender occupy at least 40 percent of non-executive directors' positions (and therefore members of supervisory bodies) or having the underrepresented gender occupy at least 33 percent of all positions, including both non-executive and executive directors (and therefore members of the representation body).

"The draft assumes that regulated companies achieve parity of 33 percent of all positions, both on the board of directors and on the company's supervisory board," it added.

The draft's authors state that the provision of Article 2 of the directive excludes from its scope micro, small and medium-sized companies with fewer than 250 employees, whose annual turnover does not exceed EUR 50 million or whose total annual balance sheet does not exceed EUR 43 million.

"This means that only those listed companies with 250 employees or more and meeting one of the financial thresholds will be covered by the requirements of the directive. In the case of Poland, it is estimated that this will be less than half of the companies currently listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange," the ministry explained.

The draft provides for penalties. In case of non-performance or improper performance of obligations by a company, the European Commission may impose a fine up to an amount equivalent to 10 percent of the total annual revenue shown in the last audited financial statements for the financial year.

Companies have time until June 30, 2026, to implement the regulations and in the case of state-controlled companies, where the state assets minister exercises rights over shares in a company, the specified deadline is December 31, 2025.

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