Decree partially transposes EU pay transparency directive for Flemish public sector

On 7 November 2025, the Flemish government agreed a draft decree that partially transposes Directive (EU) 2023/970 (the “pay transparency directive” or the “directive”). The scope of the draft is limited to public sector employers within the Flemish competences and therefore does not address private sector transposition for employers operating in Flanders.

Negotiations on implementation of the decree in the private sector are ongoing.The Flemish decree is the second legislative initiative in Belgium to be drafted after the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (FWB) has already transposed the directive in its own decree

The Flemish draft decree is scheduled to enter into force on 7 June 2026. It has been submitted to the SERV, VLOR, VMRI and the Council of State for their opinions. Before it can take effect, the draft decree must still be adopted by the Flemish Parliament and published in the Belgian Official Journal.

Scope of application and deviation from the directive

Scope and application

The draft applies to Flemish services, local (Flemish) authorities, and certain educational institutions, and covers workers within these organisations irrespective of the nature of the employment relationship, which means that employees and civil servants are within scope.

Definitions and pay concepts

The draft adopts the directive’s key definitions, including pay level expressed as gross annual pay and the corresponding gross hourly pay, complementary or variable components, and the concept of work of equal value based on objective, gender neutral criteria. Where the draft departs from the directive, it does not broaden the definitions already provided, but offers additional illustrative examples of objective criteria (such as level, grade, skills, efforts, responsibility, working conditions, and factors relevant to the specific job). These examples are more prescriptive than the directive’s more general wording.

Right to information and channels for requesting information

The draft establishes an annual obligation for employers to inform workers of their right to request information on pay, mirroring the directive’s requirement to notify workers each year. The draft therefore aligns with the directive on the existence of the annual notification but differs by specifying the Flemish institutional channels through which requests may be made.

The three channels provided are as follows:

• The local government, the Flemish service, or the educational institution;

• The trade union representative of the employee’s representative trade union delegation; or

• The Flemish Human Rights Institute, established by the decree of 28 October 2022 establishing a Flemish Human Rights Institute.

The draft sets a 60 day deadline for employers to respond to such requests, which is substantively equivalent to the directive’s two month requirement, but the draft places greater emphasis on Flemish bodies as request channels.

The information that can be requested is the individual pay level of the worker and the average pay levels broken down by gender for categories of staff performing the same work or work of equal value. This content follows the directive’s provisions closely and does not reduce the scope of the information that must be disclosed.

Reporting obligation: Metrics, transparency of methodology, thresholds, and timelines

The draft reproduces the directive’s list of required reporting metrics, which include the gender pay gap, the gender pay gap in variable components, the median gender pay gaps, the proportions receiving variable pay, quartile distributions by sex, and the gender pay gap by category of workers split between ordinary pay and complementary components.

The draft preserves the directive’s employer thresholds and reporting timetables. These are:

• Annual reporting for employers with 250 or more workers as from 7 June 2027;

• Three yearly reporting for employers with 150 to 249 workers as from 7 June 2027; and

• Three yearly reporting for employers with 100 to 149 workers as from 7 June 2031.

This alignment means that, in practice, the reporting calendar proposed by the Flemish authorities matches the directive’s schedule for in-scope entities.

Management certification and trade union consultation

The draft requires the management board or body to confirm the accuracy of the reported information after consultation with representative trade unions, and it grants those trade unions access to the methods used by the employer to calculate the metrics.

This reflects the directive’s requirement that reported data be confirmed after consultation, but the Flemish text imposes the confirmation squarely within internal Flemish governance structures.

Joint pay assessment and remedial action

The draft imports article 10 of the directive verbatim, which requires employers to carry out a joint pay assessment where a pay report reveals an average pay difference of at least 5% in a category, and the employer cannot justify or has not remedied that difference within six months of the report.

The procedural content and remedial intent of the joint pay assessment therefore align directly with the directive.

Monitoring and supervisory arrangements

Although the draft adds a provision envisaging close cooperation with a Flemish supervisory body, it does not designate a particular monitoring or supervisory body or set out its powers and responsibilities in detail.

This is a departure from the directive’s explicit requirement that EU member states designate a monitoring body and provide for its tasks, so the draft leaves a key implementation element unresolved. The delay in the appointment of a federal body appears to be linked to ongoing negotiations around overarching legislation for the private sector. It is understandable that the legislator aims for consistency.

Partial transposition: Elements not included

Re employment transparency and pay history prohibition: The draft omits providing any candidate facing obligations at this stage and therefore does not require employers to provide applicants with the initial pay or pay range prior to recruitment, and does not prohibit employers from asking applicants about their pay history.

Sanctions, enforcement, and evidential burden: The draft contains no specific penalties, fines, or enforcement regime for breaches of the information and reporting obligations and it does not implement the directive’s provisions shifting the evidential burden to the employer where pay transparency obligations are not met. 

Limitation periods and procedural safeguards: The draft does not set out minimum limitation periods for bringing equal pay claims or the procedural safeguards that the directive prescribes (for example, a minimum three year limitation period or rules on the suspension/interruption of limitation periods). As a result, procedural elements that materially affect access to justice remain to be transposed.

Comparison with the FWB decree

Overall, the Flemish draft and the FWB decree seem broadly similar. 

The FWB decree is more developed on enforcement, preemployment transparency, and integration with other anti discrimination laws, while the Flemish draft concentrates on operationalising the directive’s reporting and information rights within the public sector and explicitly mentions that it only concerns a partial transposition of the directive.

The Flemish draft gives multiple examples of objective criteria, whereas the FWB decree only specifies that the criteria must be objective.

Both transpose the annual obligation to provide information about the right to request information. The FWB decree does not provide details regarding which entity should be approached while the Flemish draft decree specifies multiple options.

Both the Flemish draft and FWB decree have not yet appointed a supervisory body.