EU Pay Transparency + Uneven Member State Adoption: Four Points for Multinational Employers

Takeaways

• With the EU Pay Transparency Directive 06.07.26 transposition deadline nearing and Member States’ uneven implementation, multinational employers will be required to track country-specific rules.
• Employers must comply with core transparency obligations, including gender-neutral pay structures, providing pay ranges during recruitment, and responding to employee pay information requests within set timeframes.
• The Directive introduces pay gap reporting and remediation requirements, with varying obligations by employer size.

Related link

• Understanding the EU Pay Transparency Directive

Article

The transposition deadline for EU Member States to have implementing measures in force for Directive (EU) 2023/970 on pay transparency is June 7, 2026, and the EU Commission has made clear no extensions will be granted. With only Italy and Slovakia having passed full final transpositions, most countries are expected to miss the deadline, resulting in uneven implementation across the European Union.

Employers operating in multiple jurisdictions should therefore track national developments closely.

Four key points warrant particular attention.

1. Gender-Neutral Pay Structures Are Mandatory

Employers’ pay structures must enable an assessment of whether workers are performing the same work or work of equal value. Those structures must be based on objective, gender-neutral criteria and must not directly or indirectly discriminate based on workers’ sex. At minimum, the assessment criteria must include skills, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. Employers should also ensure that soft skills are not undervalued.

National transposition alert:

• The Directive demands social partner involvement: Does consultation suffice or is codetermination requested? In some Member States, including the Netherlands, works council involvement may go beyond consultation, requiring consent.
• Some countries or sectors might impose certain criteria beyond those mentioned in the Directive.

2. Pay Information Must Be Provided During Recruitment

Under the Directive, job applicants have the right to receive information on the initial pay or the pay range for the position concerned, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria. Where a collective agreement applies, the relevant provisions must also be communicated. That information must be provided in a manner that enables informed and transparent pay negotiation, whether in the job advertisement, prior to the interview process, or otherwise before the conclusion of the employment contract.

Employers are also prohibited from asking applicants about their pay history in current or previous employment. The aim is to reduce the risk that historical pay disparities are carried forward into new employment relationships.

Job vacancy notices and job titles must be gender-neutral and recruitment processes be led in a non-discriminatory manner. For multinational employers, this has immediate implications for recruitment workflows, template documentation, HR systems, and the training of hiring managers.

National transposition alert:

• Some Member States (e.g., Italy and Ireland) are making it mandatory to include the pay range in the job advertisement itself.

3. Employees Have a Real Right to Request Pay Information

Workers have the right to request and receive, in writing, information on their individual pay level and on average pay levels, broken down by sex, for categories of workers performing the same work or work of equal value. Workers may exercise this right personally or through workers’ representatives, in accordance with national law and practice.

Employers must respond within a reasonable period and, in any event, within two months. They must also inform workers annually of the existence of this right and of the steps needed to exercise it. Where the information provided is inaccurate or incomplete, workers are entitled to request additional and reasonable clarification and to receive a substantiated reply.

Employers should put in place a clear internal process for receiving, reviewing, and responding to requests in a compliant and consistent manner.

National transposition alert:

• The Directive has a broad definition of pay, Member States might try to limit this definition (e.g., Italy). 
• Some Member States reduce the term for answering (e.g., Poland provides 30 days).

4. Reporting on the Gender Pay Gap

The Directive imposes different June 7 deadlines for pay gap reporting obligations according to employer size.

Member States may also apply reporting obligations to employers with fewer than 100 workers in their national transposition.

Workers’ representatives need to be involved in setting up the reporting.

The employer must conduct a Joint Pay Assessment in cooperation with workers’ representatives to address unjustified gaps:

1. If reporting reveals a gender pay gap of at least 5% in any category of workers; 
2. The employer cannot justify that gap on objective, gender-neutral criteria; and 
3. The employer has not remedied the gap within six months of the relevant reporting date.

National transposition alert:

• Some countries (e.g., France and Denmark) are lowering the reporting threshold to 50 employees.
• Some countries (e.g., the Netherlands) are including temporary agency workers in the headcount.

Key Message on Gold-Plating

For multinational employers, the existence of confirmed or signaled gold-plating in at least seven Member States means a single group-wide compliance approach will likely not be sufficient.

Country-specific analysis would be required in each jurisdiction where staff are recruited or employed, with particular attention to pre-employment transparency obligations, reporting thresholds, procedural deadlines, and the personal scope of the applicable national rules.

Next Steps

Do not wait for perfect cohesion across the EU. Prepare now for a legal landscape that will be broadly aligned at the EU level but operationally different from one Member State to another.

Consider these priority steps:

• Mapping which employing entities and worker populations fall within the scope in each Member State, accounting for the Article 9 phased reporting timelines;
• Reviewing pay structures and job evaluation systems against the Article 4 requirement for objective, gender-neutral criteria (including an assessment of whether soft skills are being undervalued in women-dominated roles);
• Updating recruitment processes, offer documentation, and HR workflows to reflect Article 5 obligations — and checking whether national law requires pay ranges in job advertisements rather than merely before an interview;
• Establishing an internal process for pay information requests, including timing, escalation, data governance, and the mandatory annual notification obligation;
• Preparing for reporting and, where necessary, remediation processes that may trigger a joint pay assessment; and
• Monitoring national transposition in each relevant jurisdiction, especially where draft laws appear to go beyond the Directive’s minimum standard.

For additional guidance, please contact a Jackson Lewis attorney.