The Brussels eurocrats never miss an opportunity to regulate and control the lives of citizens - and companies

The Brussels bureaucrats are constantly working to find new ways of increasing control and regulation of citizens - and companies:

After weeks of wrangling over the issue, the European Commission approved a draft law that would create a gender quota for non-executive directors of stock-listed companies across the European Union. If approved, the new regulations would stipulate that women occupy 40 percent of the seats on the non-executive boards of Europe's roughly 5,000 publicly traded companies by 2020. In instances where candidates' professional qualifications were the same, women would also be given preference, should they be under-represented in that company. Companies that do not adhere to the rules could be sanctioned.

The proposal is a watered-down version of one put forward by the quota's long-time champion, European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, who vowed not to give up after her first effort was blocked by the Commission in September.

But the proposal must still be approved by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, the powerful EU body that comprises the leaders of the 27 member states. This may prove difficult because a few countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom, are opposed to a legally binding gender quota.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert spoke out against approving the law after its announcement on Wednesday, a position that was emphasized once again on Thursday by one of the quota's biggest opponents in Germany, conservative Minister of Family and Women's Affairs Kristina Schröder, who favors a voluntary regulation she has dubbed the "flexi-quota."
"Europe shouldn't decide on things that member states can better regulate themselves," she told the daily Wiesbadener Kurier.

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Leftist and left-leaning German newspapers appear to be for the new proposal, but fortunately at least  one conservative paper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, is questioning the wisdom of Mrs. Reding's efforts:

"Still, the EU is sawing off its own branches, so to speak. Reding's wish for the European Commission to be yet more political, if that is possible, opposes the wishes of the individual member states who support the Union. The mantra 'more Europe,' which has been accepted amid the debt crisis, will not be parroted in every area. On the contrary, the general competence of the EU, often supported by the member states, is actually considered a cause of Europe's crisis of confidence. When moral interventionism is piled on top of all that, it's time for the Union to reflect upon its condition."

PS

If Mrs. Reding, a Luxembourg politician, currently serving as European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, succeeds in her efforts, the logical next step for her is to start working on an extension of the law, calling for mandatory quotas for homosexuals and lesbians in the boardrooms. And why not also quotas e.g. for muslims, atheists, children, retired people, you name it ....

There are still thousands of unheard of new regulations waiting to be introduced by the unelected and overpaid  eurocrats. And they know, that every new European directive and regulation leads to an even bigger bureaucracy to control the lives of ordinary citizens .....