In the paper the authors analyze the role of corporate governance codes in reaching the best practice in corporate governance. The corporate governance is a set of complementary mechanisms aimed at protecting investors' rights. A special attention is given to the content of a chosen set of EU Codes of Corporate Governance in order to define the main differences but also the significant similarities between them. The chosen set of the EU Codes includes French, Italian, Austrian, German, UK, Swiss, Slovenian, Norwegian and Croatian Code. The authors stressed their opinion that the main differences among the coverage of Codes are the results of the characteristics of the national corporate governance system and law. In the most EU countries complying with the Code's provisions and applying the Code's principles is not obligatory and they are not legally binding. The authors concluded that similarities are bigger than differences and they give a great contribution in improving corporate governance.