250+ employees: your obligations under the Directive

• Pay range before the interview (Art. 5). Applicants receive the initial pay or its range for the position — in the vacancy notice or before the interview — so negotiations start informed.
• Pay history questions banned (Art. 5(2)). Employers may not ask candidates about their pay in current or previous jobs — not in interviews, not in forms.
• Gender-neutral vacancies and titles (Art. 5(3)). Vacancy notices and job titles must be gender-neutral and recruitment processes led in a non-discriminatory manner.
• Objective pay criteria, accessible to workers (Art. 6). The criteria used to determine pay, pay levels and pay progression must be objective, gender-neutral and easily accessible. (Member states may exempt employers under 50 workers from the pay-progression part.)
• Workers' right to pay information (Art. 7). Any worker can request, in writing, their individual pay level and the average pay levels, broken down by sex, for the category of workers doing the same work or work of equal value. The employer answers within 2 months.
• Pay secrecy clauses banned (Art. 7(5)). Workers cannot be prevented from disclosing their pay for the purpose of enforcing equal pay — contractual pay-confidentiality clauses are unenforceable for that purpose.

You report by 7 June 2027, then every year, covering the preceding calendar year. That brings the full reporting stack:

• Categories of work of equal value (Art. 4). Pay structures must allow assessing whether workers are in a comparable situation, using objective criteria: skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions — the basis of every gap calculation.
• Gender pay gap reporting (Art. 9). Seven metrics — mean and median gaps, variable components, quartiles and per-category gaps — confirmed by management, with workers' representatives entitled to ask how the figures were produced.
• Joint pay assessment at ≥ 5% (Art. 10). A mean gap of at least 5% in any category of workers, not justified by objective gender-neutral criteria and not remedied within 6 months of the reporting date, triggers a joint pay assessment with workers' representatives.
• Remedies and burden of proof (Art. 16–18). Workers who suffered pay discrimination are entitled to full compensation; in court, once facts suggesting discrimination are shown, it is for the employer to prove there was none.
• Penalties, including fines (Art. 23). Each member state sets penalties — effective, proportionate and dissuasive, including fines. National implementing laws differ; country editions of Egalis track the local amounts.

Job evaluation first (the categories every metric stands on), then a monthly watch on the per-category gap, then the report is a formality instead of a fire drill. The compliance calendar lays out your exact clocks; the plans follow the same thresholds as this page.