Luxembourg's Yves Mersch has been appointed to the executive board of the European Central Bank.
He was approved for the post by EU leaders at the summit in Brussels overnight.
The European Parliament had blocked Mr Mersch's appointment last month on the grounds, it said, that the ECB had not tried hard enough to find a suitably qualified female candidate for the job.
The ECB, like many EU institutions, rates poorly on gender diversity at the higher levels. Just two women have sat on its executive board in its 14 year history and there are currently no female members.
When compared to the US Federal Reserve, three of the seven board seats are occupied by women.
But leaders at the EU summit in Brussels decided last night to fill the key vacancy at the ECB, which is confronting a heavy workload during the eur ozone debt crisis with missions to verify bailed-out countries' compliance with their loan agreements.
