EU pay transparency is about to reshape remote hiring: what changes in 2026 and how to prepare now
Pay transparency is about to change how jobs are advertised and negotiated across Europe. Remote teams will feel it first, because the rules bite wherever you hire EU-based workers. The EU Pay Transparency Directive requires member states to pass national laws by 7 June 2026. Those laws will hard-wire salary ranges into hiring, expand employees’ rights to information, phase in gender pay gap reporting from 2027, and toughen enforcement if gaps can’t be justified.
What changes from June 2026
From June 2026, employers hiring in EU member states must tell candidates the initial pay or its range before interview. Most organisations will do this directly in the job advert. Employers may not ask about pay history at any point in the process. These two steps set a new baseline for fair, informed salary conversations in cross-border recruitment.
Employees gain stronger rights once hired. Workers can request their individual pay level and the average pay levels by sex for comparable roles (“same or equal value”), and employers must reply within two months and remind staff annually that this right exists. Contractual pay-secrecy clauses that stop workers discussing pay are prohibited. Information must be accessible, including for workers with disabilities.
Compliance will be judged against objective, gender-neutral criteria.
Member states must ensure tools and methodologies for evaluating “equal work or work of equal value” based on factors such as skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions, which employers will need to reflect in job architectures and grading frameworks.
The Directive also shifts the burden of proof in equal pay disputes. Where workers show facts suggesting discrimination - or where an employer has not implemented required transparency measures - employers must prove there was no discrimination. Penalties must be effective, proportionate and dissuasive under national law.
What employers will have to publish
Gender pay gap reporting will phase in by workforce size. Employers must compute and provide, at minimum, the overall and median gender pay gaps, gaps in variable components, the proportion of women and men receiving variable pay, quartile pay bands, and gaps by category of workers (for equal work or work of equal value).
The reporting cadence is fixed in EU law:
250+ workers: first report due 7 June 2027 (covering 2026), then annually
150–249: first report due 7 June 2027, then every three years
100–149: first report due 7 June 2031, then every three years
Member states may go beyond these floors and add duties for employers under 100. National “monitoring bodies” must publish headline pay-gap data in a user-friendly way to enable comparisons; employers may also publish on their websites.
A reported 5%+ gap in any category that cannot be justified by objective, gender-neutral criteria triggers a joint pay assessment with workers’ representatives and a plan to fix it within a reasonable period. Public buyers may even exclude companies from tenders if they fail transparency duties or have an unjustified 5%+ gap in a category.
What candidates and employees can ask
Candidates must receive salary information before interview, and cannot be asked about previous compensation. This matters for remote roles spanning multiple EU markets where norms vary widely. Workers can request their own pay and the average pay in their category, and must be told how pay is set and progresses. Employers must make these criteria easy to access and objective.
Pay discussions are expressly protected. Workers cannot be prevented from sharing their pay to enforce equal-pay rights, ending the use of contractual pay-secrecy clauses common in legacy agreements.
Reporting thresholds, remediation and penalties
Reporting duties start at 100 employees, with the staggered schedule above. Where a 5%+ difference in average pay in any category is not objectively justified and not remedied within six months, a joint pay assessment is mandatory. Member states must also support smaller employers with guidance and training, and ensure GDPR-compliant handling of data.
Timeline and a quick country tracker
The Directive entered into force on 6 June 2023 (20 days after publication on 17 May 2023). All member states must transpose it by 7 June 2026. First reports for large employers are due 7 June 2027, covering calendar year 2026.
Progress varies as of August 2025:
Belgium (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles / Wallonia-Brussels Federation) became the first EU jurisdiction to transpose, effective 1 January 2025, with stricter rules in scope. It requires salary ranges in job adverts and adds reporting on the impact of family-related leave—a preview of how national rules may go further than the EU minimum. Scope is limited to employers under that community’s jurisdiction.
Poland has adopted a partial transposition focused on hiring transparency. New duties take effect 24 December 2025 (including range disclosure and a ban on salary-history questions), with further measures expected by 7 June 2026.
Malta has introduced initial measures effective 27 August 2025, including providing pay information to applicants and a right for workers to obtain pay details; broader requirements are expected in the full transposition.
Several other member states have drafts or formal processes under way (for example Sweden, the Netherlands, Ireland, Finland, Lithuania, Germany, France, Slovakia). A live transposition tracker is useful to monitor each country’s draft, final law and effective dates, because local rules can exceed the EU baseline.
What this means for remote-first employers
Distributed teams routinely compare roles across countries, currencies and markets. Consistency and defensibility matter. The Directive expects organisations to be able to evidence equal value and justify differentials—for example where performance, skills scarcity or market premiums apply—using clear, gender-neutral criteria. Poor documentation will become a legal and reputational risk once employees and candidates begin exercising their rights and pay-gap data appears online.
A practical plan for 2025–2026
Map every role to a gender-neutral job architecture with levelling, evaluation factors and example comparators. Use the factors in the Directive (skills, effort, responsibility, working conditions) and document where market premiums apply.
Build transparent pay bands per role and location policy. Decide where you will be location-based versus location-agnostic, and set guardrails for exceptions.
Update the ATS and hiring workflow: put ranges in every EU-facing job ad, remove pay-history fields, and prepare candidate-friendly notes that explain banding, progression and equity adjustments.
Stand up a reporting pipeline that can calculate required indicators by EU employing entity and by category of workers. Test your 5% trigger logic and pre-plan joint pay assessment governance.
Launch communications that notify employees annually of their rights, explain how pay is set and progressed, and train managers to answer common questions.
Prepare accessibility: ensure job ads and pay information are provided in formats accessible to candidates and workers with disabilities.
What remote jobseekers in Europe should expect
Salary ranges will appear in EU job ads and pay will be discussed earlier.
That reduces guesswork when applying across borders and helps you compare total compensation and progression criteria. After joining, use your right to information to check you’re paid fairly within a distributed team. Keep an eye on your employer’s public reporting from June 2027; if unexplained gaps persist, there should be a joint assessment and concrete actions. Sharing pay details with colleagues for the purpose of enforcing equal-pay rights is protected.
Key definitions and scope to keep in view
The Directive applies to public and private employers and covers all workers in an employment relationship under national law, including part-time, fixed-term, agency, platform workers, trainees and apprentices.
Pay includes base salary plus complementary or variable components, in cash or in kind (for example bonuses, allowances, benefits, statutory sick pay, and certain pensions). Member states must ensure that information, reporting and assessments respect GDPR and data-minimisation principles, with safeguards to prevent disclosure of identifiable worker information.
The bottom line for remote teams
Most companies already share banding internally; the difference from 2026 is that ranges and criteria move into the spotlight—from job ads to public reporting. Teams that invest now in fair architectures, clean data and manager training will have smoother hiring conversations, stronger retention and fewer surprises when reports go live.
Citations
Core legal text and deadlines: Directive (EU) 2023/970 (EUR-Lex). Pre-employment transparency, salary-history ban, worker information rights, accessibility, equal-value criteria, annual worker notices: Articles 5–8. Reporting content and cadence, 5% trigger and joint assessment: Articles 9–10. Burden of proof and penalties: Articles 18 and 23. Entry into force and transposition deadline: Articles 34–36. Council overview confirming the 5% joint-assessment trigger and thresholds. Country status examples: Belgium (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles), Poland and Malta sources above.