EU Pay Transparency Directive 2026: what employers need to prepare

Publishing a salary range in every job ad, answering an employee who asks for the average pay of colleagues, justifying a 5% gap between women and men: the EU pay transparency directive changes the way a company recruits and pays. The French text has not yet been voted, but its content and timeline are now broadly known. Here is what applies to you depending on your headcount, and what is worth preparing from the 2026 payroll onwards.

Quick answer. Directive (EU) 2023/970 had to be transposed by 7 June 2026 at the latest. In France, transposition bill no. 944 was presented to the Council of Ministers and tabled in the Senate on 10 September 2026, under the accelerated procedure. As of 26 September 2026, it has not been adopted: the gender equality index is still due in 2027, with the new indicators announced for 2028.

Transposition is not complete: the 7 June 2026 deadline has passed, and the bill transposing Directive (EU) 2023/970 was only tabled in the Senate on 10 September 2026. The Government triggered the accelerated procedure the same day, which limits the process to one reading per chamber before a possible joint committee.

The text, registered as no. 944 (2025-2026 session), was presented by the Minister of Labour and Solidarity and the Minister of Public Action and Public Accounts, after an opinion of the Conseil d'État delivered on 23 July 2026. It has 22 articles in four titles: private employers (Labour Code and Commercial Code), public employers, public procurement (a new ground for exclusion in case of breach of transparency obligations) and final provisions.

Status of the procedure as of 26 September 2026: first reading in the Senate, with the committee and plenary schedule to be checked on the legislative file. Until the law is promulgated, these new rules do not directly bind a private employer; the current obligations (gender equality index from 50 employees, equal pay under the Labour Code) continue to apply.

Our view. The gap between 7 June 2027 under the directive and the French switch announced for 2028 will be one of the points to follow during the parliamentary debates. For an SME, the right reflex is not to wait for the exact date: it is to have clean data by position, by sex and by pay component from the 2027 payroll onwards, since that data will feed the first calculation.

Directive (EU) 2023/970 of 10 May 2023 strengthens the application of the principle of equal pay for women and men for the same work or work of equal value. It does not set salaries: it requires pay to be readable, comparable and justifiable, through four mechanisms.

• Before hiring (Article 5): candidates are informed of the starting pay or its range, and employers may not ask about their current or past pay.
• During employment (Articles 6 and 7): access to the criteria used to set pay and pay progression, and a right for every employee to obtain information on their own pay and on the average levels of their category.
• Pay gap reports (Articles 9 and 10): gender pay gap indicators for employers with 100 or more employees, and a joint assessment if a gap of at least 5% is neither justified nor remedied.
• Remedies (Article 18 in particular): the burden of proof is adjusted in the employee's favour in alleged pay discrimination cases.

The concept of pay is broad. Article 3 covers basic salary and any other consideration, in cash or in kind, paid directly or indirectly: bonuses, variable pay, benefits in kind, overtime. A company that only compares base salaries therefore underestimates its gaps.

Information duties towards candidates and employees apply to all employers, with no threshold. Pay gap indicators depend on headcount: the directive only requires them from 100 employees, but the French bill provides for them from 50 employees, under the non-regression principle relative to the current gender equality index.

The seven indicators mirror those of Article 9 of the directive: mean and median pay gap, gaps in variable or complementary components, the proportion of women and men receiving them, distribution by pay quartile and the gap by category of workers doing the same work or work of equal value. According to the Government, six of these indicators would be pre-calculated from DSN (monthly payroll declaration) data, which makes the quality of payroll settings decisive.

These frequencies are those of the bill as tabled: they may change during the parliamentary process.

Yes, once the law is in force. The bill creates an Article L. 5332-2-1 of the Labour Code prohibiting the public distribution of a job offer that does not state a range for the proposed pay and, where applicable, the references to the collective agreement provisions applicable to the position. The obligation applies to all employers, whatever their size.

Article 5 of the directive states that this pay must be based on objective, gender-neutral criteria. The same article prohibits employers from asking candidates about their current or past pay: a micro-business with 8 employees that is hiring is covered just like a large group. Job ads and job titles will also have to be worded neutrally; according to the Government, these measures would come into force four months after promulgation. For drafting the ad itself, see our method for writing an attractive job offer.

Trade-off. Narrow range or wide range? A narrow range is more credible for the candidate and easier to defend if challenged, but it reduces your room for negotiation. A very wide range looks like no information at all and weakens the justification of the gap between two new hires. In practice, only a range derived from a documented job grid holds up over time: that is the purpose of our guide to building a pay grid by position.

Every employee will be able to request their individual pay level and the average pay levels, broken down by sex, of employees doing the same work or work of equal value. The bill leaves the response period to a decree, which may not exceed two months, in line with Article 7 of the directive.

Clauses preventing an employee from disclosing their own pay will be prohibited. Employers will also have to make accessible the criteria used to set pay and pay progression; Article 6 of the directive allows employers with fewer than 50 employees to be exempted from the progression part, a choice to be checked in the final text. Individual answers involve personal data: the way they are handled must comply with the CNIL rules on personnel management.

The underestimated risk. The real issue is not the annual report, it is the individual request. An employee can make it at any time, including in a company with 30 employees, and the answer will have to be produced within the regulatory period from payroll data. Yet categories of "work of equal value" do not exist in most SMEs. Without them, the employer knows neither what to answer nor how to justify a gap, while the directive places the burden of proof on the employer in the event of a dispute.

Where the average gender pay gap reaches at least 5% in a category of workers, is not justified by objective, gender-neutral criteria and has not been remedied within six months of publication, Article 10 of the directive requires a joint pay assessment with employee representatives. According to the Ministry of Labour, the French bill provides that such gaps be corrected by agreement or, failing that, by an action plan.

The 5% threshold does not prohibit a gap: it triggers a duty to analyse and justify it. A gap explained by seniority, a qualification or measured and documented performance remains acceptable; a gap the company cannot explain does not.

In its tabled version, the bill provides for two levels of penalty imposed by the administration: a maximum of 450 euros per breach for certain individual transparency obligations, and a financial penalty capped at 1% of pay and earnings for breaches of the obligations to calculate, publish or transmit the indicators, under conditions set by decree. The bill also adds a ground for exclusion from public procurement.

These amounts are those of the text tabled on 10 September 2026; they remain to be confirmed after the vote in Parliament.

The directive does not come on top of the gender equality index: the bill plans to overhaul it and replace it with the new indicators from 2028, after a last declaration in its current form in 2027. The current calculation of the score out of 100 and of the penalty is detailed in our article on calculating the gender equality index.

A satisfactory index score does not guarantee future compliance: the index neutralises some gaps through relevance thresholds and works by age band, whereas the directive works by category of work of equal value. If your score is low, the levers described in our article on corrective measures for a weak index remain useful to prepare for what comes next.

At the firm, we recommend treating this project as a payroll and data topic before making it a legal one. In payroll files, the most frequent sticking point is not the calculation, it is the lack of a consistent job classification.

1. Extract from the 2026 payroll every pay component per employee: base, bonuses, variable pay, benefits in kind, overtime.
2. Check the DSN settings of pay items, since six indicators would be pre-calculated from that data.
3. Group positions into categories of work of equal value using objective criteria: skills, effort, responsibility, working conditions.
4. Calculate mean and median gaps between women and men in each category.
5. Document the justification for each significant gap: seniority, qualification, measured performance.
6. Write a range for each position open for recruitment and remove any question about previous salary from forms.
7. Prepare a template answer for individual requests, with an internal approval circuit.
8. Present the approach to the works council (CSE) where the company has one, before the law requires it.

For sales staff and roles with a large variable component, the analysis must include commission calculation rules: our article on the legal framework for variable pay helps formalise them. For the rest of the year's HR calendar, see the 2026 HR and payroll obligations for employers.

Pay transparency checklist#

• Average headcount calculated to place the company in the right threshold
• Pay components extracted from payroll, including variable pay and benefits
• DSN pay items checked
• Categories of work of equal value defined and documented
• Gender gaps calculated by category, mean and median
• Written justification for each gap of at least 5%
• Pay range ready for each open position
• Question on previous salary removed from interviews and forms
• Pay confidentiality clauses removed from template contracts
• Procedure for answering individual requests within the regulatory period

Points to watch. The exact content of the French obligations (frequencies, penalties, entry into force of each measure) will depend on the text voted. The tables in this article reflect the directive and the bill tabled on 10 September 2026. This article is for information: a decision specific to your company requires a review of your payroll, your collective agreement and the law in force.

• Directive (EU) 2023/970 had to be transposed by 7 June 2026; bill no. 944 was tabled in the Senate on 10 September 2026, under the accelerated procedure, and has not yet been adopted.
• All employers, whatever their size, will have to publish a pay range in their job ads and stop asking about previous pay.
• The French bill provides for seven indicators from 50 employees; the gap by category would be calculated every three years up to 249 employees, every year above that.
• An unjustified gap of at least 5% not remedied within six months triggers a joint pay assessment.
• The equality index is still due in 2027, before its announced replacement by the new indicators from 2028.