EU Member States had to transpose the European Pay Transparency Directive into national law by 7 June 2026. The Directive aims to strengthen the principle of equal pay for women and men performing equal work or work of equal value. To achieve this goal, it grants additional rights to workers and job applicants and gives them more tools to identify and challenge gender-based pay discrimination.
The practical application of the Directive has nevertheless raised many questions. To provide further clarity, the European Commission published a comprehensive FAQ on 6 August 2026. The document provides additional guidance on several key concepts and obligations under the Directive.
The scope of application
One of the first clarifications concerns the personal scope of the Directive. The Commission confirms that self-employed persons do not fall within its scope.
Minimum harmonisation
The Commission also stresses that Member States retain a degree of flexibility when implementing the Directive. For example, Member States may exempt employers with fewer than fifty workers from the obligation to make pay progression criteria available to their employees.
The Directive also allows Member States to introduce or maintain provisions that are more favourable to workers.
Clarification of the concept 'pay'
The Commission further explains which elements should be included in the concept of pay under Article 3(1)(a) of the Directive. It follows the broad interpretation that has long been adopted by the Court of Justice. This includes variable pay and thus all kind of bonuses.
However, not all benefits must be taken into account for pay transparency purposes. According to the Commission, benefits granted to all workers under identical conditions may be excluded. Examples include meal vouchers, smartphones, laptops, Christmas gifts and collective training programmes. The same applies to benefits that are voluntarily available to all workers without specific eligibility requirements, such as a company gym membership.
Collective bargaining
Some countries or organisations had defended the idea that pay scales that would be the result of collective bargaining should be presumed to be compliant with the Directive, which would mean that employer who just apply sector CBA's for their pay scales would be of the hook. However, the Commission emphasizes that the Directive is applicable to all employers, even when pay is regulated through collective bargaining. Therefore, the Commission shuts down any hope for an easy escape route based on collective bargaining. However, the Directive does not call into question the discretion to differentiate pay between workers performing the same work, or work of equal value. Any pay differences between female and male workers must be justified by objective, gender-neutral and non-discriminatory criteria.
Right to privacy and GDPR
The Directive allows pay information to be shared in accordance with the GDPR. It does not require the disclosure of individual pay data, but only information on average pay levels for categories of workers. Many questions were raised regarding the right to privacy of employees in smaller work categories, as it will be relatively easy to retrieve the individual pay information if the average only refers to a small number of employees. The Commission sets aside these questions and states that there is no issue with GDPR as there is a legal processing basis for justifiable ground (promoting/delivering pay transparency) and the processing is proportional. Therefore, there is no violation of the GDPR.
Furthermore, Article 12(3) of the Directive allows Member States to introduce an additional safeguard where aggregated pay data could lead to the identification of an individual. In such cases, access to the information may be restricted to workers' representatives, labour inspectorates or equality bodies who then can verify whether there is an indication of discrimination. In this way, the employees do not receive the information regarding the average themselves. However, in practice this safeguard option does not appear to be widely used by Member States.
Although the Commission seems to state that there is no privacy issue, questions may be raised as to whether the disclosure obligations are fully compatible with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to respect for private life.
Work classification and work of equal value
Another important issue concerns the classification of workers into job categories. According to the Commission, this classification should be based on the value of the work performed within the organisation.
Workers performing the same job naturally belong to the same category. However, workers performing different jobs may also belong to the same category if their work is considered to be of equal value. In that case, they should generally be placed in the same job category and pay range.
The assessment of work of equal value must be based on at least four objective and gender-neutral criteria: skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions.
These criteria form the legal minimum (they have to be applied!). Employers can still grant a different weight to these four criteria (if they can justify this difference). Employers may take additional objective and gender-neutral factors into account, provided that they can justify their relevance and that their use does not undermine the principle of equal pay.
EU-wide guidelines
Together with the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), the Commission has developed EU-wide guidelines on gender-neutral job evaluation and classification.
These guidelines are not legally binding. However, they provide employers with a practical step-by-step approach to developing objective, transparent and non-discriminatory pay structures. In this way, the Commission seeks to facilitate not only the legal implementation of the Directive but also its practical application within organisations.
Do you have questions about the European Commission's FAQ or about the Pay Transparency Directive in general? Please do not hesitate to contact Van Olmen & Wynant. Van Olmen & Wynant would be pleased to advise you on the impact of the new rules on your organisation.
The EU-wide guidelines: https://eige.europa.eu/gender-mainstreaming/toolkits/gender-neutral-job-evaluation
