EU pay transparency directive: your 2026 requirements checklist

The EU Pay Transparency Directive (Directive (EU) 2023/970) requires employers to share salary ranges with candidates, answer pay information requests from workers, and report gender pay gaps. Member states had to transpose it into national law by June 7, 2026.

This guide summarizes the directive itself and turns it into a checklist you can work through. One caveat up front: your actual obligations come from your country's implementing law, which can go further than the directive. Treat everything below as accurate as of mid-2026 and verify the current national rules before you rely on them.

Where the directive stands as of mid-2026

The directive was adopted in May 2023 and gave member states three years to transpose it. That deadline, June 7, 2026, has now passed. As of mid-2026 the picture is uneven: some countries transposed early or on time, while others are still finalizing their implementing acts. Late transposition does not make the topic optional. National laws are arriving with the directive as their floor, and several add stricter rules, so if you employ people in more than one member state you need a country-by-country view.

What employers must do before hiring

Two obligations bite before a candidate ever signs. First, applicants have the right to know the initial pay or pay range for a position, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria, in the vacancy notice or before the interview. In practice that means publishing salary ranges in job postings or sharing them early in the process. Second, you may not ask candidates about their current or past pay. Salary-history questions have to come out of application forms, interview scripts and ATS fields. Job ads and titles must also be gender neutral.

The practical consequence: every range you disclose should come from a pay structure you can defend, not from a number improvised for one requisition. Employers that already maintain salary bands per role and level find this part of the directive close to free; the grid those bands sit in is what we call a salary structure.

What workers can ask once hired

Workers get a right to request, in writing, their individual pay level and the average pay levels, broken down by sex, for categories of workers doing the same work or work of equal value. The directive sets a two-month window for the employer to respond, and requires you to remind workers of this right every year. Pay secrecy clauses are banned: you cannot stop workers from disclosing their own pay. You must also make your pay-setting and pay-progression criteria objective, gender neutral and easy for workers to access, though member states may exempt employers with fewer than 50 workers from the progression-criteria part.

Gender pay gap reporting thresholds

Reporting obligations scale with headcount. Employers with 250 or more workers report their gender pay gap annually, with the first reports due in June 2027. Employers with 150 to 249 workers report every three years, also starting in June 2027. Employers with 100 to 149 workers report every three years starting in June 2031. The directive itself does not require reports below 100 workers, but member states can extend the duty downward, and some national laws do, which is another reason to check local rules.

The 5 percent trigger: joint pay assessments

A 5 percent unexplained pay gap in any single category of workers, left unfixed for six months, triggers a joint pay assessment.

That is the directive's enforcement engine. If your report shows an average gender pay gap of at least 5 percent in any category of workers, and you cannot justify it with objective, gender-neutral criteria, and you do not remedy it within six months, you must carry out a joint pay assessment together with workers' representatives. On top of that, the burden of proof in pay discrimination claims shifts to the employer, workers can claim full back pay, and member states must provide penalties including fines. Finding those gaps before a report does is exactly what a pay equity audit is for.

Your 2026 compliance checklist

1. Map every role into categories of equal work or work of equal value, using objective criteria such as skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions. A job leveling framework is the usual way to make those criteria explicit.
2. Build or refresh salary bands for each category and level, so every number you disclose traces back to a documented structure.
3. Add a pay range to every vacancy notice, or share it before the first interview, and update your posting templates accordingly.
4. Remove salary-history questions from application forms, interview guides, recruiter scripts and ATS fields.
5. Delete pay secrecy clauses from employment contracts, offer letters and handbooks.
6. Write down your pay-setting and progression criteria and make them accessible to workers.
7. Stand up a process for answering pay information requests within the two-month window, and schedule the annual reminder of the right.
8. Check your headcount against the 100, 150 and 250 worker reporting thresholds and put the first deadlines in the calendar.
9. Run an internal gap analysis now, and fix or document justification for any category gap of 5 percent or more before public reporting makes it visible.

What small and mid-size employers should do now

If you are under 100 workers, the reporting duty likely does not reach you yet, but the range disclosure, the salary-history ban, the secrecy ban and the information rights all do. The cheapest path to compliance is the same as the path to better hiring: benchmark your roles, set bands, and publish ranges you can explain. That is exactly what salary benchmarking software is for, and you can see the mechanics on our how it works page. Whatever tooling you use, have counsel in each member state confirm your read of the local implementing law. This area is moving quickly in 2026, and the directive is the floor, not the ceiling.