The EU Pay Transparency Directive, explained

• 6 June 2023 — the Directive entered into force.
• 7 June 2026 — deadline for every member state to transpose it into national law. National laws may go further than the Directive.
• 7 June 2027 — first gender pay gap reports from employers with 150+ employees, covering the preceding calendar year.
• 7 June 2031 — first reports from employers with 100–149 employees.

Below 100 employees, reporting is voluntary unless your member state extended it — but everything in section 2 still applies.

• 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.

The Directive doesn’t compare everyone with everyone. Pay is compared within categories of workers doing the same work or work of equal value, built on four objective, gender-neutral criteria: skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions. Job evaluation is where compliance is won or lost — a biased classification quietly corrupts every number reported downstream. Read the job evaluation guide →

The report contains 7 metrics:

1. the mean gender pay gap
2. the mean gap in complementary or variable components (bonuses, commissions, benefits)
3. the median gender pay gap
4. the median gap in complementary or variable components
5. the proportion of female and male workers receiving variable components
6. the proportion of female and male workers in each quartile pay band
7. the pay gap for each category of workers doing the same work or work of equal value, split into ordinary basic salary and variable components

Management confirms the figures, and workers’ representatives are entitled to ask how they were produced. Metric (g) — the per-category gap — is the one that matters most, because the 5% threshold applies there.

A mean gap of at least 5% in any category of workers, which the employer cannot justify by objective gender-neutral criteria and does not remedy within 6 months of the reporting date, obliges the employer to run a joint pay assessment with workers’ representatives: a documented analysis of pay levels, of the proportion of women and men in each category, and of the measures that will close unjustified differences.

• Right to information (Art. 7). Any worker can request their individual pay level and the average pay levels, by sex, for their category — answered within 2 months. Employers remind workers of this right every year.
• Full compensation (Art. 16). Workers who suffered pay discrimination are entitled to recover back pay and related bonuses or payments in kind.
• Reversed burden of proof (Art. 18). Once a worker shows facts suggesting discrimination, it is for the employer to prove there was none — which makes documented, objective pay criteria your main line of defence.
• Penalties (Art. 23). Set by each member state — effective, proportionate, dissuasive, including fines.

Thresholds can be lowered, deadlines shortened, fines and reporting channels are national, and some states add their own forms and authorities. Egalis ships as country editions: the generic EU edition implements the Directive’s floor, and country packs add the local law, language, calendar and reporting formats — the Romanian edition is live at egalis.ro.