Equality has been a core focus of hiring laws in Europe for decades, in two key ways: discrimination and equal pay.
However, these laws are currently fairly general – they make it illegal to discriminate and illegal to pay people unfairly, but without specific requirements for how employers must comply with this within the hiring process.
This will change with the implementation of the EU Pay Transparency Directive by June 2026.
The EU Pay Transparency Directive includes specific requirements on salary transparency in the hiring process – listing salary ranges in job postings, using gender neutral language for job descriptions, banning employers from asking candidates their salary history, and switching the burden of proof in employment tribunals to the employer.
In this article we’ll take a closer look at existing hiring laws, how they will change when the EU Pay Transparency Directive comes into force, and how employers can prepare for this.
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The vast majority of European countries already include equality in their hiring laws to an extent, with two important inclusions:
However, salary transparency during hiring is not currently a legal requirement in Europe.
Yes, it is currently legal for employers in Europe (including the UK) to ask job candidates for their salary history during the hiring process.
However, it will become illegal with the rollout of the EU Pay Transparency Directive by June 2026, as the Directive includes a ban on salary history questions (see section below: ‘How will the EU Pay Transparency Directive impact hiring laws?’ for more information on this).
No, employers do not currently have to disclose the salary range when hiring for a new role in Europe (including the UK).
However, disclosing the salary range for new roles will become a legal requirement with the rollout of the EU Pay Transparency Directive by June 2026 (see section below: ‘How will the EU Pay Transparency Directive impact hiring laws?’ for more information on this).
🇫🇷 In France:
🇩🇪 In Germany:
🇸🇪 In Sweden:
🇬🇧 In the UK:
As we can see from the examples outlined above, existing discrimination and equal pay laws in Europe do not include requirements related to salary transparency during the recruitment process.
It’s very difficult to enforce equal pay laws and eliminate bias during hiring and salary negotiations without salary transparency.
Employers and job candidates can’t identify when differences in salary are occurring as a result of gender discrimination, especially because it’s often caused by unconscious bias.
Pay transparency laws are crucial to bring to light those inconsistencies.
The USA has already been leading the way on pay transparency laws in states such as California and New York – with those pay transparency laws including requirements to disclose salary ranges in job postings and not to ask candidates about their salary history.
The European Union is now following suit, with the introduction of the EU Pay Transparency Directive.
As part of our recent Pay Equity Report we explored whether the gender pay gap arises at the point of hiring, or is due to discrepancies in salary increases and promotions between men and women once in a role.
The result was unanimous.
The gender pay gap is present at the point of hiring: women are systematically hired with lower salaries than men for roles of equal value.
As an example, Ravio’s data for P4 Software Engineers in the UK found that the median new hire salary for men is £85,000 whereas for women it is £82,288 – a pay gap of 3.3%.
In contrast, the analysis found no statistically significant difference in promotion rates or promotion pay increases between men and women.
This suggests that much of the problem lies at the point of hiring, with discriminatory hiring processes leading to lower new hire salaries for women – and this is why pay transparency laws are so important.
Plus, on top of this, there are also a lot of benefits for companies too:
The EU Pay Transparency Directive explicitly includes salary transparency requirements for job applicants prior to employment, largely through Article 5.
There are four key changes to be aware of in terms of hiring processes:
Here’s the full wording of Article 5 of the EU Pay Transparency Directive, on rulings relating to pay transparency for job applicants.
1. Applicants for employment shall have the right to receive, from the prospective employer, information about:
a) the initial pay or its range, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria, to be attributed for the position concerned; and
b) where applicable, the relevant provisions of the collective agreement applied by the employer in relation to the position.
Such information shall be provided in a manner such as to ensure an informed and transparent negotiation on pay, such as in a published job vacancy notice, prior to the job interview or otherwise.
2. An employer shall not ask applicants about their pay history during their current or previous employment relationships.
3. Employers shall ensure that job vacancy notices and job titles are gender-neutral and that recruitment processes are led in a non-discriminatory manner, in order not to undermine the right to equal pay for equal work or work of equal value (the ‘right to equal pay’).
The EU Pay Transparency Directive makes it mandatory for all EU employers (companies based in EU member states or with employees in those states) to disclose the salary range when hiring for a new job position – which must be determined using objective and gender neutral criteria.
The salary range must be disclosed in advance of any salary negotiations taking place, with the wording suggesting that employers should include the salary range within the job description or make it available to candidates before interview.
Employers must also disclose any applicable collective agreements for the job position – which is relevant for countries like Sweden where collective bargaining agreements are a key part of salary negotiations.
The EU Pay Transparency Directive requires employers to use gender neutral language in all job descriptions, including for job titles.
The EU Pay Transparency Directive includes a salary history ban – employers will no longer be able to ask job applicants about their salary history during the hiring process.
The EU Transparency Directive shifts the burden of proof for employment tribunals from employee to employer – outlined in Chapter 3, Article 18 of the Directive.
It’s currently the norm in employment tribunals for discriminatory practices (including equal pay issues) for the burden of proof to be on the employee, meaning that the employee must provide sufficient evidence to prove that discrimination has taken place.
This will no longer be the case for pay discrimination cases once the EU Pay Transparency Directive is in force – employers will have to provide evidence that pay discrimination did not take place to be acquitted.
The EU Pay Transparency Directive applies to all employers in EU member states – both employers based in the EU and those who hire employees located in the EU.
This means that whilst UK employers are not directly impacted by EU law, many will have to comply with the rulings as they have employees distributed across Europe.
It’s also worth noting that the UK had a pay transparency pilot running from 2022-2024 to test the impact of pay transparency measures in the hiring process on the gender pay gap – specifically disclosing salary ranges and banning salary history conversations.
This pilot was stopped in 2024, with one of the reasons being the desire to see the impact of new pay transparency laws being introduced in other countries, which includes the EU Pay Transparency Directive. It’s likely that the UK will use learnings from the pilot and from the rollout of the EU Pay Transparency Directive to introduce its own pay transparency laws in the near future.
Most employers will need to make adjustments to their hiring processes in order to be compliant with the EU Pay Transparency Directive once it is fully implemented in all EU member states by June 2026.
The key steps to take are:
If you’re not sure where to start, a compensation tool like Ravio can help you to implement a logical and objective approach to compensation based on real-time market benchmarking data, and to identify and fix pay equity issues. Book a demo to get further advice from our expert team.
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