European Film Academy Restructures Board to Increase Regional and Ethnic Diversity
The European Film Academy is restructuring its board membership to improve regional and ethnic diversity in its management structure.
From 2024, each of the 15 EFA board members will be selected from 15 distinct geographical or linguistic regions in Europe, each comprising different countries. In addition, a board seat will be set aside for a transnational ethnic representative from either the Sámi or Roma populations in Europe. The first mandate for this seat will be for an elected member from the Sámi population.
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The remaining three board members, including the chair and two deputy chairs, will not be picked based on their region of origin.
The changes, voted through unanimously, will take affect for the upcoming EFA elections in 2023 and 2024. European Film Academy members can nominate themselves as a candidate for the region they live and work in. Members of the board are elected by all members of the European Film Academy registered to vote.
The changes will take place in two stages: A six-week self-nomination period, starting in mid-August, and board elections, which will begin in October and last another six weeks. The new board will be announced at the Academy’s general assembly in early December and new members will take up their mandates in January. Current board members who were elected in December last year will remain on the job until the end of their mandate in late 2024.
“These changes will make for a more diverse and more democratically representative board to serve the European Film Academy,” said the EFA Chair Mike Downey. “We are making a number of structural changes to the way the Academy is run, in order to bring it up to date with contemporary best practices, and this is just one of the changes which will help us serve our membership better, and provide a voice for some of those territories which have occasionally been marginalized or sidelined, not through any malign will, but simply by virtue of their geo-political location. In making these changes we will now rectify and recalibrate and the Academy will emerge stronger, more inclusive and fit for purpose for 2023 and years to come.”
The 15 regions are as follows:
Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia
Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein (as of 2025, after current mandates end)
Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia (as of 2025)
Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands
France, Monaco
Ireland, UK
Italy, Malta, San Marino
Poland, Ukraine
Andorra, Portugal, Spain
Turkey, Azerbaijan, Palestine
Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania
Armenia, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Israel
Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia
Denmark, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
The EFA said it decided to make the structural change after “ample consideration and with the wish to reflect the reality of Europe today.”
Currently, representatives from Western European countries are over-represented on the EFA board compared to Eastern and Southeastern members. At the moment, 25 percent of board members represent Eastern and Southeastern European countries. With the restructuring, those regional groups will account for 50 percent of all board seats.
The European Film Academy, first set up in 1989, represents filmmakers across 52 European countries in Europe, as well as in Israel and Palestine.
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