EU Pay Transparency Directive Legal Tracker

Status: No published text. Austria has missed the transposition deadline.

• A draft was circulated internally on 6 June 2026 but has never been published and has not entered the formal consultation stage.

• Nothing appears in the federal legal information system or the index of ministerial drafts.

• Austrian employers have no national pay transparency obligation today.

• Existing Austrian equal-pay law continues to apply unchanged.

Status: Partially in force — French Community only. No federal and no Flemish instrument.

• The French Community decree of 16 May 2024 has been in force since 1 January 2025 and operates within that Community's own competence.

• Where it applies, pay information must be available from the moment the vacancy is published — earlier than the Directive requires — and in a format accessible to disabled candidates.

• Candidates may not be asked about pay in current or previous employment.

• Pay and pay-progression criteria must be accessible to all workers, with no small-employer exemption.

• A reporting duty exists but the Government has not yet made the order fixing the first reporting dates by headcount.

Most Belgian employers still have no obligation: there is no private-sector duty anywhere in the country and no federal text to design against. Belgium will transpose through three legislators, so a single Belgian answer is unlikely to exist, and that is the planning problem rather than any individual provision.

Within the French Community the substantive work is job classification. The criteria have to be agreed with the representative workers' organisations, relevant soft skills may not be undervalued, and a pay structure that is not transparent is treated as discriminatory in itself. Where the transparency duties are not met, the burden of proof reverses onto the employer.

Status: Bill before parliament.

• The bill is a complete regime: all seven reporting metrics, a two-month reply period, and a joint pay assessment triggered by a 5% unjustified gap left uncorrected for six months.

• The reporting calendar matches the Directive exactly — first report 7 June 2027 for employers of 150 or more, covering calendar year 2026, and 7 June 2031 for 100 to 149.

• Where a worker would be identifiable the information is routed to the union or the equality body rather than refused.

• Two gaps: the recruitment disclosure duty states no time by which the information must be given, and the bill creates no penalty of its own.

Bulgarian entities belong in a group-wide 2027 reporting cycle, unlike the Netherlands, Czechia, Lithuania, Finland and France. Agency workers are counted in the user undertaking's report.

A compliance review scoped to the Labour Code alone will find only half of the obligations. Because the bill legislates no fine, exposure runs through the existing anti-discrimination sanctions. This is a bill, not law, and it can still change in committee.

• The obligations sit in anti-discrimination law and in the Labour Code at the same time.

Status: No published text. Croatia has missed the transposition deadline.

• Transposition is expected through amendments to the Labour Act, which are also expected to carry the platform work directive.

• The responsible minister said on 26 August 2026 that the amendments were ready and would be taken by urgent procedure.

• Croatian employers have no national pay transparency obligation today.

Status: Bill finalised after consultation, not yet lodged in the House.

• A revised post-consultation text exists and is formatted for gazette publication, but it has not been enacted or tabled.

• The parliamentary index of bills lodged in 2026 still ends at the sitting of 14 July 2026.

• The Minister of Labour said on 6 September 2026 that the bill would go to the Council of Ministers within September.

• No substantive provision can be stated: the operative text has not been read.

Cyprus is in default and what exists is a bill. An original and a revised text both sit on the consultation portal and they differ, so any figure circulating for Cyprus should be treated as version-dependent until the final text is published.

Advice to Cypriot entities should rest on the Directive and be clearly labelled as anticipating a bill.

Status: Bill before parliament — reached the Chamber of Deputies on 8 September 2026.

• The headline commencement date of 1 January 2027 covers only four duties: recruitment disclosure, the pay-history ban, the duty to operate a pay system, and the pay-secrecy prohibition.

• The information right, the reporting chain, the joint pay assessment and the agency-work rules are deferred to 1 January 2028, and the 100-employee band to 2031.

• First report in 2028 for the year 2027, for employers of 250 or more and of 150 to 249.

• The gender pay gap is computed from the payroll-tax base, so pay outside that base does not appear in the figure.

• Job grading is by complexity, responsibility and demands — working conditions is not a named criterion.

Czechia defers the individual information right by nineteen months, against a Directive obligation that carries no headcount threshold and no phase-in. An employer told that Czechia starts in January 2027 will plan the wrong things for the wrong year.

The headline gap figure is computed by the State from administrative data. The employer's own filing is a by-job-group report due each 30 April, against job groups it defines itself — so the preparation work is job-group architecture rather than report drafting. Build that architecture against all four Directive criteria, because a grading that satisfies the Czech list may still fall short of the Directive.

Where there is no trade union, the route for information withheld on identifiability grounds has no destination in the bill as drafted. That is a live legal question rather than a settled position.

Status: No bill. The draft lapsed at the March 2026 election.

• The amendment to the Equal Pay Act went to consultation on 26 February 2026 and fell on the dissolution of parliament for the 24 March 2026 election.

• No replacement bill has appeared and no 2026/27 legislative programme has been published.

• The proposed entry into force was 1 January 2027; that date now depends on a bill that does not exist.

• Danish employers have no national pay transparency obligation today.

Denmark is further from transposition than the word "draft" suggests: a lapsed bill is not a pending bill, and the process restarts once a government is formed.

If the text is re-tabled unchanged, Denmark would become one of the tighter jurisdictions — a four-week reply period and reporting down to 50 employees. Those figures come from the lapsed consultation draft and have not been verified against a text, so they should be used to frame risk, not to set obligations.

Status: Partially in force since 13 July 2026 — recruitment duties only.

• Pay or a pay range must be given in writing before the job interview, together with applicable collective-agreement pay terms.

• Candidates may not be asked about current or previous pay.

• Employers may not obstruct an employee from disclosing their own pay.

• There is no reporting duty, no individual information right, no joint pay assessment and no gender-neutral job title rule.

• Estonia has declared that the remaining obligations are not currently in legislative procedure.

Estonia is the clearest case of a Member State that will read as compliant in any tracker recording only whether a country "has legislation". It has three obligations in force and has expressly declined the rest for now.

Two points clients commonly get wrong: the duty in public service is narrower, covering basic salary only, and the national pay comparison tool cannot serve as a Directive reporting submission.

Status: Bill before parliament — in committee.

• Close to the Directive on almost every number that matters: all four equal-value factors, all seven metrics, a two-month reply, a 5% and six-month joint assessment trigger, and identifiability handled by routing rather than refusal.

• The first report for employers of 250 or more and of 150 to 249 is deferred to 7 June 2028 — a year later than the Directive requires. The 100 to 149 band reports from 7 June 2031.

• The reporting threshold is 100 employees.

• A penalty of €5,000 to €80,000 applies for filing the joint pay assessment late, scaled by turnover. The public sector is exempt from it.

• Gender-neutral job titles are not transposed; the bill relies on existing equality legislation, which addresses sex-restricted advertisements only.

There will be no Finnish transposing law before 1 January 2027 at the earliest, and the bill leaves its own commencement date blank. A Finnish entity will not be part of a group-wide 2027 reporting cycle.

The reporting work is not report drafting. Data flow through the Incomes Register and the national statistics office, which compute the metrics, so payroll data quality and job-group classification carry the risk — and the job groups have to be agreed with employee representatives, which puts co-determination on the critical path.

The joint pay assessment is additional to, not a replacement for, the existing pay survey in the statutory equality plan. The committee report, which does not yet exist, can still move any of this.

Status: Bill deposited in the Sénat on 10 September 2026, under the accelerated procedure.

• The penalties are in the statute and they are severe: up to 1% of total payroll, and up to 2% for a repeat within five years, imposed administratively.

• Indicators must be declared from 50 employees — lower than the Directive, because the existing French Index already bites at that level.

• A job advertisement may not be published without a pay range, and questions about a candidate's current or past pay are prohibited.

• A sanctioned employer may be excluded from public procurement for one year from the date of the sanction.

• Nearly every other figure — the indicators themselves, the joint-assessment trigger, the reply period, the identifiability floor and the first reporting date — is left to implementing decree.

The accelerated procedure allows a joint committee of both chambers after a single reading in each, so the French bill is on a compressed track. No adoption date can be inferred from that: no committee has been seized and no rapporteur has been named.

France legislates the architecture and delegates the numbers. Anyone planning a French compliance programme today is planning against a structure rather than a ruleset. What can be planned for now is structural: worker categories have to be defined by collective agreement before the information right commences, and that is the critical path. Branches have six months from promulgation to open negotiations on a categorisation method.

Recruitment changes fastest — once the law is promulgated, no advertisement may go out without a pay range. The existing Index is replaced rather than run in parallel: the ministry publishes the first six indicators, the employer's own publication becomes optional, and the per-category indicator is never published but must go to workers and their representatives.

Status: No published text. The 2017 Pay Transparency Act still governs.

• No ministerial draft has been published and the indicated August 2026 cabinet slot passed without one.

• Transposition is intended as an amendment to the existing 2017 Act rather than a new statute.

• The 2017 regime sits below the Directive on three counts: the individual information right applies only above 200 employees, the reply period is three months, and the employer may refuse where the comparator group is identifiable.

• There is no pre-employment pay disclosure duty in German law today.

Germany is in default and has no national text to design against, three months after the deadline. A German implementation project should be built directly on the Directive.

The practical warning is the opposite of the usual one: do not treat the German standard as sufficient for group-wide design. Three of its core provisions sit below the Directive and will have to rise.

Status: In force since 6 July 2026 — but the substantive obligations start on 1 November 2026.

• Law 5316/2026 was published on 6 July 2026. Its substantive articles — pay-setting transparency, recruitment, the information right, reporting, joint assessment, remedies and burden of proof — apply only from 1 November 2026.

• All seven reporting metrics are reproduced and the Directive's calendar is met exactly: 7 June 2027 for employers of 250 or more and of 150 to 249, 7 June 2031 for 100 to 149.

• Two-month reply period; compensation expressly uncapped; pay-secrecy terms prohibited in contracts, collective agreements and work rules.

• The fine amounts have not been set — a ministerial decision is still outstanding.

• Agency workers count in the user undertaking's report.

An employer told that "Greece has been in force since July" will under-plan for a 1 November start and for a first report in June 2027 over a part-year reference period.

Greek exposure cannot yet be quantified, because the instrument that sets the fines has not been issued. The Ombudsman is designated as both equality body and monitoring body, and a dedicated equal-pay unit has been created inside the Labour Inspectorate.

Status: No published text and nothing announced. Hungary has missed the transposition deadline.

• No transposing instrument has been published, nothing appears in the official gazette and nothing is before parliament.

• No responsible draft or timetable has been announced.

• Hungarian employers have no national pay transparency obligation today.

Status: General scheme only — the bill has been deprioritised.

• Only a general scheme — an outline of heads of a bill — exists. There is no bill text.

• The Pay Transparency Bill was not given priority drafting status in the Summer 2026 legislative programme; its heads remain in preparation.

• No Autumn 2026 programme has been published.

• Existing Irish gender pay gap reporting continues to apply and is not a transposition of the Directive.

Status: In force since 7 June 2026 — the deadline was met.

• Pay ranges must be given in job advertisements, and the pay-history ban extends to information obtained indirectly through recruiters.

• The category of workers is not designed by the employer: both "same work" and "work of equal value" are anchored to the classification levels of the applicable national collective agreement.

• Applying a comparatively representative national collective agreement carries a statutory presumption of conformity with the equal-pay and transparency principles.

• First report 7 June 2027 for employers of 250 or more and of 150 to 249 — in addition to, not instead of, the existing biennial gender report, so employers of 100 or more carry two parallel reports.

• Weaknesses to be aware of: pay level excludes non-structural individual awards, effort is missing from the equal-value criteria, the penalty scale is €250 to €1,500, and no limitation period is set.

The collective-agreement anchor is the defining feature of the Italian regime and it cuts both ways. It removes most of the job-architecture work that Dutch, Finnish and French employers face, and it brings a presumption of conformity. But reporting categories, quartile bands and the 5% trigger are all set by the sectoral agreement, so a group with entities on different agreements will not have comparable categories across them.

The largest practical burden is dual reporting: the decree makes no coordination with the pre-existing regime. Two ministerial instruments remain outstanding, including the one that would settle how classification systems are tested in practice.

Status: Draft standalone act — still at pre-Cabinet stage.

• Latvia is drafting a standalone pay transparency law rather than amending the Labour Law, so a compliance review scoped to the Labour Law will miss it.

• Pay information is required in the job posting — stricter than the Directive.

• Pay-secrecy terms would be void across contracts, collective agreements, work rules and employer orders alike.

• The reporting calendar matches the Directive: 7 June 2027 for employers of 250 or more and of 150 to 249, 7 June 2031 for 100 to 149.

• Nothing is in force and every provision may still change.

Latvia is a draft, and a pre-Cabinet one, so the sensible planning position is the Directive with two Latvian specifics layered on: pay in the posting, and pay-secrecy clauses unenforceable.

The standalone-act technique matters for scoping. Latvia follows Slovakia here, and in both countries the obligations sit outside the statute an employer would normally consult.

Status: In force since 7 June 2026 — but the first pay gap report is due 1 March 2028.

• Employers do not calculate or publish a gap. They file a monthly per-employee payroll dataset with the social insurance authority, which computes all seven metrics.

• The monthly filing starts on 28 February 2027 and requires a job-position-group structure to be in place before then.

• The first pay gap report is 1 March 2028 for employers of 150 or more, and 1 March 2031 for 100 to 149 — later than the Directive requires.

• Basic pay or a range is mandatory in job advertisements.

• Agency workers sit in the agency's report, the mirror image of Greece and Bulgaria.

An employer told that Lithuania met the deadline will mis-plan. The operative obligations were deferred, and the real preparation deadline is the pay-system work ahead of the February 2027 monthly filing, not the report itself.

The risks move with the architecture: data quality and job-position-group classification, rather than report drafting. Several of the underlying Labour Code provisions are not in the consolidated edition in force until 1 November 2026, so the reply period and the pay-secrecy position are not yet settled and are not stated here.

Status: No bill deposited. Luxembourg has missed the transposition deadline.

• No transposition bill has been deposited in the Chamber of Deputies.

• At a parliamentary committee exchange on 24 June 2026 the minister said consultation with the social partners would continue before a bill is presented.

• The position was re-confirmed on 8 September 2026.

• Luxembourg employers have no national pay transparency obligation today.
  

Status: In force since 5 June 2026 — the deadline was met.

• An employer must answer a pay information request in writing within eight days. This is the tightest operational duty found in any Member State, against a two-month floor in the Directive.

• Substantively Malta is one of the closest transpositions in the EU: the seven metrics, the reporting calendar, the 5% and six-month trigger, the three-year limitation period and all four equal-value factors all match.

• Employers of 25 or more must internally document their pay, pay-level and pay-progression criteria; those under 50 are exempt from the progression element.

• Recruitment disclosure is owed before the recruitment process concludes, subject to the requirement that negotiation be informed and transparent.

• Fines are criminal and imposed by a court: €2,500 to €5,000, or €5,000 to €7,000 for equal-pay breaches, increased on repetition.

The eight-day reply needs a standing process rather than an ad-hoc one. It is the single operational point that should lead any Maltese client conversation.

Two weaknesses are worth naming honestly. Pay-secrecy clauses appear to survive — the instrument permits disclosure to authorities, representatives and unions for enforcement purposes but does not void a confidentiality term. And damages above lost pay are available only where the discrimination was wilful and vexatious. Enforcement is split between the employment relations department as monitoring body and the equality commission as equality body.

Status: Bill before parliament — plenary debate scheduled for the second week of January 2027.

• There is still no Dutch start date. Commencement is left to royal decree, and the draft implementing decree's own commencement article is blank.

• First report 7 June 2028 for employers of 150 or more, and 7 June 2031 for 100 to 149 — later than the Directive requires.

• What is measured is the payroll-tax wage. Taxable benefits in kind are included; untaxed reimbursements and work-related cost scheme items are not.

• The works council consents to the job-evaluation and classification criteria and to the pay evaluation and its action plan. It is consulted on the pay report — it does not approve it.

• The Netherlands has deliberately not taken the identifiability carve-out, so a request cannot be refused because a colleague would be identifiable.

A group timetable should not hang on 1 January 2027. The bill fixes no date, the plenary debate is not until January 2027, and the implementing decree is still a consultation draft.

Run the gap on the payroll base because that is what must be filed, and run a second check against total reward, because the Directive's pay concept is the wider one and a claim will be argued on it. Budget remediation properly: the Government's own list runs to pension premiums and pension accrual, share and profit-sharing schemes and the salary scale itself, and an unjustified difference below five per cent must still be corrected — the threshold only decides whether the formal evaluation is triggered.

Two quiet deliverables are easy to miss: a data protection privacy notice covering pay transparency processing, and an authenticated filing identity at assurance level 3 for the entity that will file. The draft decree also provides for employers to be named on the inspectorate's website for three years.

Status: Partial — in force since 24 December 2025, recruitment duties only.

• Every employer recruiting under a contract of employment must give each candidate the initial pay or range plus applicable collective-agreement terms, early enough to be read and to allow an informed negotiation.

• Vacancy notices and job titles must be gender-neutral and the recruitment process non-discriminatory.

• Candidates may not be asked about pay in current or previous employment.

• There is no reporting duty, no individual information right, no joint pay assessment, no specific statutory fine and no designated enforcement authority.

• Candidates engaged on civil-law contracts or business-to-business terms are outside the duty entirely.

Poland legislated six months before the deadline and therefore reads as compliant in any tracker that records only whether a country has legislation. What is in force is two substantive points and a commencement clause.

A standalone pay transparency bill sits at government stage and is where the reporting duty, the information right and the joint assessment would arrive. It has not reached parliament.

Status: Draft — public appreciation closed on 25 August 2026.

• The full draft text was published on 5 August 2026 for a 20-day public appreciation; no bill has followed.

• Reporting would apply from 50 employees — stricter than the Directive.

• Two-month reply period.

• Candidate pay information would be owed only before the employment contract is concluded — later than the Directive requires, and the clearest confirmed case of under-transposition on recruitment in the EU.

• The draft sets a one-year prescription period for the victimisation provisions.

Portuguese entities should plan for a 50-employee reporting threshold either way, since that provision is stable across the drafting so far.

The recruitment timing provision is the one most likely to move between the draft and the bill, and it is the one worth watching. Nothing here is in force.

Status: Draft — ministry text, and one of the most complete drafts anywhere in the EU.

• A standalone law of 25 articles, plus amendments to the Labour Code and two other acts.

• The reply deadline is 30 working days — roughly six weeks, and tighter than the Directive's two months.

• The reporting calendar matches the Directive: 7 June 2027 for employers of 150 or more, 7 June 2031 for 100 to 149.

• All four equal-value factors, all seven metrics, a 5% and six-month joint pay assessment, and fines of 10,000 to 20,000 lei, rising to 20,000 to 30,000 on repetition.

• A second clock, unrelated to the 5% trigger: any unjustified pay difference revealed by the report must be corrected within 90 working days.

A Romanian entity could not run on a group-standard two-month service level for information requests. The 30 working day deadline is the single most operationally significant Romanian deviation.

Half the obligations land in the Labour Code rather than in the new law, so a review scoped to the standalone act misses the pay-secrecy prohibition and the worker's information right.

Two health warnings. The draft as published contains no entry-into-force provision. And a later parliamentary version is reported to change the prescription period and the penalties; it has not been located, so nothing from Romania should be quoted without the date of the text it comes from.

Status: In force since 7 June 2026 — and one compliance deadline has already passed.

• Every employer that existed before 7 June 2026 had to have gender-neutral pay-setting criteria and pay structures in place by 31 July 2026. That date has passed and the duty is enforceable by the labour inspectorate.

• Slovakia matches the Directive on the 5% trigger, the six-month remedy window, the two-month reply, the seven metrics and the reporting calendar.

• First report 7 June 2027 for employers of 150 or more, over a five-month reference period running from 1 August to 31 December 2026. The 100 to 149 band reports from 7 June 2031.

• Pay-secrecy terms are void, compensation is uncapped and the limitation period is three years.

• Enforcement is split: the ministry fines a reporting failure at €4,000 to €8,000 after a 15-day grace period, and the labour inspectorate fines the other duties.

The expired pay-structure deadline should lead any Slovak conversation. An employer that has not done that work is already non-compliant, not preparing for a future obligation.

The five-month stub first reference period makes annualised and quartile metrics awkward to compute and is worth flagging to reporting teams early. Note also that the obligations sit in a standalone act rather than in the Labour Code, even though the Labour Code was amended in parallel.

Status: Draft with the Economic and Social Council since February 2026 — not tabled.

• A draft act was sent to the social partners in February 2026 and has not been tabled in parliament.

• Nothing has been opened on the public consultation portal or the legal register.

• No text has been located or read, so no provision can be stated.

• Slovenian employers have no national pay transparency obligation today.

Seven months with the social partners and no tabling is a slow-track signal rather than a neutral one.There is nothing to implement. Advice should rest on the Directive.

Status: Draft Royal Decree — consultation closed, not yet published in the official gazette.

• The pay register binds every employer whatever its size, and must now carry both the mean and the median, in annual and hourly terms, component by component, with the workers' representation consulted ten days before it is drawn up.

• Reporting starts at 50 employees, on the Directive's own calendar: 7 June 2027 for employers of 150 or more, 7 June 2031 for 50 to 149.

• The pay audit is unconditional for every employer of 50 or more, negotiated inside the equality plan, with unjustified gaps closed within six months. There is no 5% trigger and no separate joint pay assessment.

• The instrument contains nothing on recruitment: no duty to give candidates a pay range, and no pay-history ban.

• Pay-confidentiality clauses are not prohibited.

Spanish entities are already inside a pay register and pay audit regime and the draft extends it rather than creating it. Spain does belong in a group-wide 2027 reporting cycle, unlike the Netherlands, Czechia, Lithuania, Finland and France.

Recruitment is the gap that matters most in practice. Spain has no candidate disclosure duty and no pay-history ban, and nothing in the pipeline would create them — so a group recruitment standard cannot be justified by reference to Spanish law. Pay confidentiality should be treated as an open exposure rather than a settled alignment.

A new tripartite monitoring commission will collect and publish the data. The instrument itself describes the transposition as partial.

Status: Draft — an inquiry report and a referral to the Council on Legislation. No bill.

• The public inquiry reported in 2024 and a referral to the Council on Legislation followed in January 2026.

• No bill has been laid before parliament; the most recent government item is dated 8 June 2026.

• No proposed statutory text has been read, so no provision can be stated.

• Swedish employers have no national pay transparency obligation today.

Status of Transposition

Transposition deadline

All member states are required to have implemented the Directive by 7 June 2026.

Scope

Directive scope and coverage

The key measures introduced by the Directive are:

• Member states are required to establish gender pay gap reporting regimes, with company-wide results as well as results broken down by categories of workers. Employers must conduct a pay assessment where pay reporting reveals a gender pay gap of at least 5% in any category of workers that cannot be justified by objective and gender-neutral factors, and which has not been remedied within six months of submission of the report;

• Requirement to disclose the pay level or pay range for an advertised role to ensure pay transparency for jobseekers;

• A prohibition on asking job candidates about their current pay and pay history;

• Limits on the extent to which employers can control workers discussing their rate of pay;

• Increased transparency in setting rates of pay;

• A right to information about pay rates in an effort to ensure that workers are able to identify disparities; and

• The requirement to identify categories of workers for pay reporting, joint pay assessment and pay transparency purposes brings the concept of equal value to the forefront of the approach to equal pay in the EU.

Employer thresholds under the Directive

The Directive provides that employers with 100 or more workers must meet the reporting thresholds, but member states can implement reporting requirements on a phased basis should they wish:

• Employers with at least 150 workers must submit their first report in 2027;

• Employers with at least 250 workers must report annually thereafter;

• Employers with between 150-249 workers must report once every three years; and

• Member states may delay the first reporting for employers with between 100-149 workers to 2031.

Pay Transparency & Secrecy

Pay transparency obligations at recruitment stage

Prospective employers are obliged to give job applicants information about the initial pay or pay range for a particular position. The Directive provides that the information must be provided in a manner that ensures a transparent and informed negotiation on pay, such as "in a published job vacancy notice, prior to the job interview or otherwise".

Employers are not allowed to ask applicants about their pay history and must ensure that job adverts and job titles are gender neutral, with the recruitment process being led in a non-discriminatory manner. This right to information does not explicitly extend to internal applicants but is expressed to be incumbent on prospective employers only.

Employee right to request pay information

Workers have the right to request and receive, within two months, written information on their individual pay level and the average pay levels, broken down by sex, for categories of workers doing the same work or work for equal value during their employment. Employers are required to inform all workers of this right on an annual basis.

Pay secrecy clauses

Employers cannot prevent workers from disclosing their pay for the purpose of the enforcement of the principle of equal pay. In particular, member states are required to put in place measures to prohibit contractual terms that restrict workers from disclosing information about their pay.

Transparency on pay and pay progression criteria

Employers must make easily accessible to their workers the criteria that are used to determine workers’ pay, pay levels and pay progression. Those criteria shall be objective and gender neutral. Member states may exempt employers with fewer than 50 workers from that obligation.

Gender Pay Gap Reporting

Differences with the Gender Pay Gap Reporting metrics

N/A

Non-Compliance

Employee remedies

Member states must ensure that workers are entitled to unlimited compensation in respect of all of the losses sustained where their equal pay rights have been breached. This must include: full recovery of back pay and related bonuses or payments in kind (together with interest); compensation for lost opportunities; non-material damage; any damage caused by other relevant factors (which may include intersectional discrimination); and interest on arrears.

Penalties / enforcement mechanisms

Member states are required to put in place penalties for employers that break the rules and workers who have suffered gender pay discrimination can receive compensation. Member states must also establish specific penalties for infringements of the equal pay rule, including fines that guarantee a real deterrent effect.

Other Relevant Provisions

Categories of worker performing same work or work of equal value

Work of equal value is determined by taking the following factors into account:

• Objective, gender-neutral criteria should be used, and they should be agreed with workers’ representatives, where such representatives exist;

• The criteria should not be based directly or indirectly on workers’ sex;

• The objective criteria should include skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions. These factors have been identified as being essential and sufficient for evaluating the tasks performed in an organisation regardless of the economic sector to which the organisation operates. If appropriate, any other factors which are relevant to the specific job or position should be taken into account; and

• Relevant soft skills should not be undervalued in the process.