With the enactment of this Directive, Member States were required to adopt national legislation extending the reporting obligations of employers. However, a number of practical doubts have arisen in relation to the transposition of EU rules into national law.

1. By when must the provisions of the Directive be implemented?

According to the Directive, the deadline for transposing the EU rules into national law is 7 June 2026.

Some Member States (e.g. the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, as well as Poland) have already started legislative work to implement the Directive. A parliamentary bill implementing the Directive was submitted to the Sejm in December 2024.

2. Who will the new rules cover?

The Directive applies to all employers with employees within the EU, regardless of the size of the company. However, the number of employees will affect the date from which the reporting obligations will apply to a particular entity.

3. What do the provisions of the Directive cover?

The Directive envisages:

• new responsibilities at the recruitment stage
• extended employee rights to information
• new information and reporting obligations for employers
• a joint remuneration evaluation procedure
• sanctions for breaching Directive provisions.

4. What changes will the recruitment process include at company level?

Employers will be obliged to inform job applicants of their starting salary or, at the very least, the salary range (e.g. in the job advertisement). In addition, the Directive prohibits clauses in contracts with employees prohibiting the disclosure of their salary. Employers will also not be able to ask questions during the recruitment process about the candidate's remuneration in previous jobs.

5. What information will employees be entitled to?

Employers will be required to provide information at employee request about:

• individual salary level for an applicant requesting the information
• average salary levels, broken down by gender, for categories of employees doing the same job as the applicant or a job of equal value, and to provide clarification if information provided is insufficient.

Employers will have to inform employees on an annual basis about the above entitlement and the procedure for exercising it.

In addition, employers will need to ensure that objective and gender-neutral criteria for determining employee remuneration, salary levels and salary progression are readily available.

6. What reporting obligations will employers face?

Employers with 100 or more employees will be required to report information including:

• the gender pay gap (also in the form of complementary or variable components)
• the median of this gap (also in the form of complementary or variable components)
• the percentage of female and male employees receiving supplementary or variable components and in each pay quartile.

The Directive differentiates between employers by the number of employees and sets reporting deadlines in relation to this:

• employers with 250 or more employees - by 7 June 2027 and every year thereafter
• employers with 150 to 249 employees – by 7 June 2027 and every three years thereafter
• employers with between 100 and 149 employees – by 7 June 2031 and every three years thereafter.

Employers will report the above information to the state-designated monitoring body and some also to employees and their representatives. Employers will have to take remedial measures if the reporting reveals pay gaps not justified by objective, gender-neutral criteria.

7. What are the sanctions for breaching the provisions under the Directive?

The Directive has introduced numerous safeguards and enforcement measures for the new rules, including the right to compensation for the employee, the shifting of the burden of proof to the employer, and the obligation for Member States to introduce penalties for breaches of equal pay and transparency rules.

8. What if conducted reporting shows a wage gap?

If the reporting shows a wage gap of 5% or more in any category of employees and the employer has neither justified such a gap based on objective, gender-neutral criteria nor remedied the gap within six months of the submission of the wage report, a joint wage assessment should be carried out in cooperation with the employees' representatives.

The joint pay assessment will include:

• an analysis of the percentage of employees of each gender in each category of employees
• information on average salary levels
• any differences in average salary levels in each category of staff (and the reasons for them)
• percentage of female and male employees who have benefited from pay improvements due to exercising parental rights
• measures to address pay gaps where they are not justified by objective, gender-neutral criteria
• assessing the effectiveness of measures included in previous joint remuneration assessments.

9. What action should employers take?

We propose that the following steps be taken now, pending the enactment of national legislation:

• carry out an evaluation of remuneration in individual positions, having regard for all the factors influencing remuneration
• establish a (verifiable) remuneration system based on objective criteria, including a salary progression policy
• prepare information on the remuneration system for job applicants
• review the standard content of job advertisements
• establish procedures for providing information on individual employees' salaries and prepare a sample form for such information
• check whether there is a wage gap of more than 5%
• prepare a process for collecting payroll data (as well as reporting procedures and templates).

Marcin Wujczyk

Bartosz Maciejewski