The deadline for every EU country to write this into national law was 7 June 2026. Almost none of them did — which means whether you're legally entitled to a pay range depends entirely on your postcode.
Statutory Mandates Under Directive (EU) 2023/970
To eliminate gender pay gaps and enforce equal pay for equal work (Article 157 TFEU), the European Parliament and Council adopted Directive (EU) 2023/970. Once actually in force in a given country, it restructures candidate rights and employer duties during recruitment:
- Pre-interview pay band disclosure (Article 5(1)): employers must provide the initial pay level or range in the job advertisement, or before the first interview, without the applicant needing to ask for it.
- Ban on pay history inquiries (Article 5(2)): employers are legally barred from asking candidates about their current or previous pay, directly or indirectly.
- Gender-neutral job titles and descriptions: vacancy notices and selection processes must be structured in a non-biased, gender-neutral way.
The Reality in Mid-2026: A Genuinely Fragmented Landscape
This is the part most coverage of this Directive gets wrong by treating it as uniform EU law already in effect everywhere. It isn't, and the gap matters practically for anyone job-hunting across borders.
Member states were required to transpose the Directive into national law by 7 June 2026. As that deadline passed, only four countries — Slovakia, Italy, Lithuania, and Malta — had it fully in force. The rest of the EU fell into varying states of readiness: Belgium, Ireland, and Poland had partial implementation; roughly ten states had a published draft but no enacted law; and around ten more, including Germany, Spain, and Sweden, had no public draft at all as of the deadline. Sweden has publicly signaled it intends to seek a postponement rather than transpose on schedule; France's own consultation only began in March 2026, with enactment not expected until late 2026 at the earliest.
The European Commission has been explicit that it will not grant a blanket extension, and missing the deadline exposes non-compliant member states to infringement proceedings under Articles 258 and 260 TFEU — but that's a matter between the Commission and the state, not something that retroactively creates the right for you as a job seeker in a country that hasn't transposed yet.
What This Means for You, Practically
Whether you're legally entitled to see a pay range before an interview depends entirely on which country's job market you're in — not on the Directive existing at the EU level. If you're job-hunting in Italy, Slovakia, Lithuania, or Malta, this is now enforceable national law. If you're in Germany, Spain, France, or several other major economies, it may still be months away from taking effect locally, even though the EU-level deadline has technically passed.
Once a country's transposition is in force, the enforcement mechanisms are genuinely strong: the burden of proof in an equal-pay dispute shifts to the employer (Article 18), compensation for pay discrimination has no fixed cap and covers back pay plus lost opportunities, and contracts can no longer include pay-secrecy clauses (Article 7). But none of that helps you today if your country hasn't actually transposed the Directive yet — check your specific country's current status before assuming the pay-range disclosure right applies to your job search right now.
Related Kibbo Tools
Sources
- EUR-Lex — Directive (EU) 2023/970 on Pay Transparency, full legal text. eur-lex.europa.eu
- European Commission — Pay Transparency in the EU, policy framework. ec.europa.eu