The EU Pay Transparency Directive (Directive (EU) 2023/970) is an EU law requiring employers to disclose a role’s pay range before or during your first interview, and banning them from asking what you earned in your last job. EU member states were legally required to transpose it into national law by 7 June 2026 — a deadline only 5 of the bloc’s 27 states have actually met so far.
TL;DR:
- Employers must share the pay range for a role before or during your first interview (Directive (EU) 2023/970, Art. 5)
- Asking about your salary history is now illegal wherever the directive has been transposed
- Only 5 of 27 EU states had fully transposed the law as of 16 August 2026 — Slovakia, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, and Greece (per the Trusaic Member State Transposition Monitor)
- Companies with 250+ staff must report their gender pay gap annually from June 2027; a 5%+ unexplained gap forces corrective action, escalating to a joint pay audit after 6 months
- Your actual leverage depends entirely on which country’s law governs your contract — not where you happen to live
What the Directive Actually Requires
Directive (EU) 2023/970 exists to close the gender pay gap by making pay decisions visible and challengeable, not just theoretically equal. Two provisions matter most if you’re job-hunting right now.
First, employers must tell you the initial pay or pay range for a role, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria, before your interview or — at the latest — during it (Directive (EU) 2023/970, Art. 5). That’s a real change from the industry norm of holding salary back until a verbal offer, after you’ve already sunk hours into the process.
Second, employers are banned from asking about your current or previous pay. The point is structural: your next salary can’t inherit a discrepancy from your last one, whatever caused it. If an interviewer asks anyway in a state where the directive is in force, they’re asking you to volunteer information they’re legally not allowed to request.
Once you’re hired, the directive also gives you a standing right to see the criteria your employer uses to set pay levels and decide progression — not just your own number, but the logic behind it.
Reporting Thresholds and the 5% Pay Gap Trigger
The disclosure obligations above apply to every employer once the directive is in force locally. A second, size-dependent layer forces larger employers to actually measure and report their gender pay gap:
| Company size | Reporting frequency | First report due |
|---|---|---|
| 250+ employees | Annual | June 2027 (covering 2026 data) |
| 150–249 employees | Every 3 years | June 2027 |
| 100–149 employees | Every 3 years | June 2031 |
| Under 100 employees | Voluntary | — |
This matters beyond the paperwork. If a company’s report finds a pay gap of 5% or more in any category of workers that it can’t justify on objective, gender-neutral grounds, it has to take corrective action. If that gap is still unresolved six months later, the company must run a joint pay assessment with workers’ representatives, covering the entire workforce — not just the flagged category.
For a job seeker, this is the closest thing to an audited paper trail on pay equity that most companies have ever been forced to produce. A 250-person-plus employer that’s been through a reporting cycle has, by law, already had to defend its pay structure once. A 40-person startup has faced none of this pressure, voluntarily or otherwise.
Where Implementation Actually Stands Right Now
Here’s the part that changes the calculation entirely: as of 16 August 2026, only five EU member states have fully transposed the directive — Slovakia, Italy, Lithuania, and Malta met the original 7 June 2026 deadline; Greece passed its law on 2 July 2026 (per the Trusaic Member State Transposition Monitor). Estonia has partially transposed. The remaining roughly 21 states are somewhere between a published draft and no visible activity at all — Croatia and Hungary had announced nothing as of that same date.
A state that misses the deadline isn’t just late on paperwork — it exposes itself to EU infringement proceedings under Articles 258 and 260 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, and in principle to damages claims from affected workers under existing EU state-liability case law. To put a number on how seriously the EU treats a missed deadline: Spain was fined €6.83 million plus a daily penalty for missing the deadline on a different EU law, the Work-Life Balance Directive. No penalty has been issued under the Pay Transparency Directive yet — enforcement here is still in its first months.
Because this status changes on a roughly weekly basis as more drafts clear national parliaments, treat the country list above as a snapshot, not a fact you can rely on by the time you read this. Check a live tracker — the Trusaic Member State Transposition Monitor is a reasonable one — for the current status of the country your prospective employer is registered in before you assume anything.
What This Means For Your Job Search
If you’re applying to a company registered in one of the five fully-transposed states, you should expect a real pay range before your first interview, and you have a clear, citable basis to redirect a recruiter who asks what you currently earn. I’ve seen plenty of candidates burn three interview rounds on a role that was never going to clear their number — use the range as a filter on day one, not as something you find out after you’ve already invested the time.
If the company is registered somewhere the directive hasn’t landed yet — most of the bloc, right now — none of this is enforceable. Ask for the range and the leveling criteria anyway, just don’t expect the law to back you up if they decline. Treat it as a due-diligence question, the same way you’d ask about the tech stack or the interview process.
The genuinely tricky case is cross-border remote work — say, living in Portugal while working for a company registered in Germany. Which country’s transposition status actually governs your contract depends on the specifics of your employment agreement, not on where you happen to be sitting. Don’t assume the directive applies just because you’re an EU resident, and don’t assume it doesn’t just because your employer is elsewhere in the bloc. Ask the employer’s HR or legal team directly which national law governs your compensation, and whether that includes the transparency obligations above — it’s a normal, expected question in 2026, not an awkward one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can an interviewer still ask what I currently earn? Not legally, in any state where the directive has been transposed — Slovakia, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, and Greece as of August 2026. Employers there are barred from asking applicants about current or previous pay (Directive (EU) 2023/970, Art. 5). Elsewhere in the EU, the ban isn’t yet in force, though the direction of travel is clear.
What actually happens if a company finds a 6% gender pay gap? A gap of 5% or more in any worker category that can’t be explained by objective, gender-neutral criteria obliges the employer to take corrective action. If, say, a software company found a 6% gap between male and female senior backend engineers with no technical justification, and the gap were still there six months later, it would be required to run a joint pay assessment with workers’ representatives covering the whole company.
How often do companies have to publish their pay gap data? It depends on headcount: annually from June 2027 for 250+ employees, every three years from June 2027 for 150–249 employees, every three years from June 2031 for 100–149 employees, and voluntarily for anything smaller.
Does this apply to me if I work remotely for a company in another EU country? It depends on which country’s law governs your employment contract, not on where you live. Ask the employer’s HR or legal team directly rather than assuming either way.
Is there a single place to check whether a country has actually passed this into law? Trackers like the Trusaic Member State Transposition Monitor are updated more often than any one article can be — worth bookmarking if you’re actively interviewing across borders, since the picture is still moving month to month.
Why did so many states miss the deadline? The directive requires new national reporting infrastructure, not just a rule change — pay gap calculation methodologies, enforcement bodies, and penalty regimes all had to be built, not just legislated. That build-out is why the gap between “deadline passed” and “actually in force” is measured in months, not days, for most of the bloc.
Where This Leaves You
Right now, whether this directive actually protects you comes down to one question: has the country your employer is registered in passed it into law yet. For most of the EU, as of August 2026, the honest answer is still no.
That doesn’t make the directive irrelevant to a job search today — it makes it a leading indicator. Salary ranges up front and no salary-history questions are becoming the expected norm across the EU, not a favor one employer is doing you. Asking for both, everywhere you interview, costs nothing and increasingly reads as normal rather than pushy.
If you’re filtering for genuinely remote, EU-workable roles in the first place, Xeito already screens out the “remote — US only” listings that waste your time before you get anywhere near a salary conversation.
Sources
- Directive (EU) 2023/970 — official text, EUR-Lex
- European Commission Confirms the EU Pay Transparency Directive Implementation Deadline Remains 7 June 2026 — Ogletree Deakins
- In the Eleventh Hour: Implementation Status of the EU Pay Transparency Directive — Littler
- EU Pay Transparency Directive: Member State Transposition Monitor — Trusaic