00:00The EU countries missed the June 9 deadline to adopt the Pay Transparency Directive into their national laws.
00:06Why? And what does it mean for workers?
00:08The Pay Transparency Directive forces companies to disclose salaries, to report gender pay gaps
00:15and gives workers the right to know what colleagues in equivalent positions earn.
00:21Some countries made it. Italy's legislative degree 1996-2026 came into force just right on time.
00:30But across most of the EU, the deadline passed without legislations being finished.
00:36So what does the Directive actually require?
00:39From June 2026, employers across the EU must post salary ranges in job ads before the first interview,
00:46drop questions about a candidate's salary history, let workers request pay data on colleagues doing equivalent work
00:53and document the gender-neutral criteria behind every pay decision.
00:57The challenge is to close Europe's gender pay gap, which it still sits at 11%.
01:03And the logic is simple. You cannot challenge a gap that is not visible.
01:07Employers with 150 or more workers must regularly report pay gap statistics
01:13broken down by job category, quartile, and variable pay.
01:17And if an unexplained gap of 5% of more shows up,
01:21they must open a formal joint pay assessment with worker representatives and fix it.
01:26The Directive lifts also the burden of proof.
01:29Today, a worker who suspects pay discrimination has to prove it themselves.
01:34Under these rules, if the employer hasn't fulfilled its transparency duties,
01:40it's up to them to show that there is no pay discrimination.
01:43But that only works where the law has actually landed.
01:47And the picture across the EU is fragmented.
01:50Italy, Slovakia, and Lithuania were the only countries to fully adopt implementing legislation.
01:55Belgium, Malta, and Poland had partially transposed the rules.
01:59The Netherlands formally announced a delay aiming for January 2027.
02:03Ireland confirmed it would miss the deadline.
02:05Greece has published its draft legislation at the beginning of June.
02:09Estonia signaled it might rather pay EU infringement fines than implement the Directive as written.
02:15And five countries, including Austria, Hungary, and Luxembourg, had taken no action at all.
02:20And the Commission made it clear.
02:22Countries that miss the deadline may face infringement procedures and potential financial penalties.
02:28But the weight falls on workers and companies and not governments.
02:33Without national laws in place, EU-level rights exist on paper, but the tools to enforce them don't.
02:39Workers can't yet use local courts to claim paid data.
02:43Employers don't know which national rules apply.
02:46And multinationals face a patchwork where staff in one country have full transparency rights,
02:51while colleagues in another country do not.
02:54Legal advisors are already warning companies, don't wait for your government.
02:58Courts are starting to read existing equal pay law through the lens of the Directive,
03:03raising the bar even before national legislation is finalized.
03:07For companies with 150 or more staff, the first formal pay gap reviews are set in 2027
03:15with data from this year, 2026.
03:18For the full story, read our in-depth explainer on euronews.com.
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