The EU Pay Transparency Directive in brief

General information, not legal advice. This article summarises the EU Directive, not the current implementation status of any country. Check the national law that applies to your organisation, or ask your legal adviser, before relying on a deadline, threshold or procedure.

Primary source: Directive (EU) 2023/970.

The EU Pay Transparency Directive (Directive (EU) 2023/970) aims to close the gender pay gap by making pay more transparent. EU member states were due to bring it into national law by 7 June 2026.

The main obligations

Pay transparency before employment (Article 5)

Job applicants have the right to know the starting pay or pay range for a job, and employers may not ask about their pay history. Evenpay doesn't publish job ads, but you can document your recruitment practices in a policy. See Pay policies (Early Access).

Pay-setting and progression criteria (Article 6)

Employees must be able to see the criteria used to set their pay and pay progression. These criteria must be objective and gender-neutral. In Evenpay this is supported by job evaluation, pay bands and pay policies.

Right to information (Article 7)

Employees can ask for their own pay level and the average pay of colleagues doing the same work or work of equal value, broken down by gender. Employers must answer within a reasonable time, at most two months. They must also remind all employees of this right every year. See How pay information requests work.

Reporting on the pay gap (Article 9)

Employers with 100 or more employees must report gender pay gap indicators. How often depends on their size. See Key deadlines and thresholds and The EU report's Article 9 indicators.

Joint pay assessment (Article 10)

For employers subject to Article 9 reporting, Article 10 requires a joint pay assessment with workers' representatives when all three conditions are met: the reporting shows an average pay difference of at least 5% between women and men in a category of workers; the employer has not justified it using objective, gender-neutral criteria; and it has not been remedied within six months of submitting the pay report. Evenpay's configurable alerts help you investigate differences; an alert or its closure is not itself a legal assessment. See Pay equity alerts.

Work of equal value

Comparisons are made between employees doing the same work or work of equal value. The Directive names four criteria: skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions. See Work of equal value groups and What job evaluation is and why it matters.

Good to know

• National laws can be stricter than the Directive, for example with shorter deadlines or lower thresholds. Evenpay's settings let you match your own rules.

• See How Evenpay covers each obligation for where each requirement is handled in the app.

Related articles

• How Evenpay covers each obligation

• Key deadlines and thresholds

• The compliance readiness checklist

• Glossary