France backs Brussels on female board quotas France has given fresh impetus to a European Commission plan to impose a 40 per cent female quota on listed company boards, becoming the first big country to back the move, which Britain is opposing. In a two-page letter, seen by the Financial Times, Paris urged the Commission to press ahead with the draft legislation, which threatens to sanction companies that fail to boost the number of women on their boards. "The French authorities ... resolutely support the logic of this draft directive," said the letter signed by Pierre Moscovici and Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, respectively France's minister of finance and women's rights. "It is important for the European Commission to present such a project quickly to the Council and the European Parliament, the latter having expressed itself, on several occasions in favour of a community initiative in this direction, including introducing quotas," the letter concluded. France's move is a clear challenge to the UK, which has been leading a coalition of nine countries - including the Netherlands, Hungary and the Czech Republic - against the Brussels" plan. A UK-led letter sent this month urged the EU to refrain from regulating a matter that several countries have been dealing with at the national level either through voluntary or domestically-set mandatory schemes. But Paris, which will require big French companies to put women in 20 per cent of board positions by 2014 and 40 per cent by 2017, said that self-regulation was not enough to deal with the problem. "It now seems clear that even though some measures taken at a national level are certainly effective domestically, they remain insufficient to boost equality of rights at a European level," Paris said in the letter. The draft proposal championed by Viviane Reding, EU justice commissioner, is also creating a rift between senior male and female officials within the EU's executive arm. Leading female commissioners, including Catherine Ashton, Neelie Kroes, Connie Hedegaard, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn and Cecilia Malmström, - respectively the bloc's chief foreign policy, telecoms, environment, innovation and interior officials - are opposed to an EU-wide initiative. I support the goal wholeheartedly, we need more women at the top. But this progress should not be imposed from the European level. Europe should not do what others can do better," Ms Kroes told the FT. National governments and businesses have a responsibility to follow through. They can't complain about possible EU intervention and then sit on their hands. Meanwhile, most male commissioners, including Olli Rehn, Michel Barnier, Antonio Tajani and László Andor - respectively the EU's chief economic, financial, industrial and social affairs officials - have all come in support of Ms Reding's draft proposal. "I believe we need stronger and more impactful Europe-wide measures to enhance gender balance and the use of women's capacity in business life than so far has been done," Mr Rehn told the FT. The voluntary approach has worked in some countries but not at all sufficiently overall. Sometimes somebody must lead in gender issues by example - why not the EU? The EU has been trying for about a decade to find a solution to the stark gender imbalance on company boards across the region, but has failed to achieve much though market driven programmes. Despite repeated efforts to allow companies to voluntarily increase the number of female board members, women account for less than 14 per cent of board positions in listed companies, according to EU data from January.