#Data #HRIS #Strategy

Pay Transparency: Waiting for the Law to Act, a Risky Bet

27/05/2026

France's legislative calendar creates a comfortable illusion for organizations. The pay transparency law is not expected to be adopted before fall 2026, while the first structured reporting obligations aren't expected until 2027. The deadlines therefore still seem far off…

Except that the reporting requirements will cover 2026 data. The current fiscal year. And some provisions of the directive could begin producing certain legal effects as soon as the European transposition deadline expires, regardless of whether the French law has been adopted.

Organizations waiting for the law to be published before starting the necessary groundwork risk running out of time.

WHAT THE DIRECTIVE CHANGES FOR COMPANIES

Half a Century of Principle… and Still a 13% Gap

Sixty-six years after the Treaty of Rome enshrined equal pay in European law, the gender pay gap remains around 13% across the EU. Successive legal texts established a principle without imposing obligations on how to enforce it. An employee who only has access to their own pay stub cannot identify a gap, let alone challenge it — they don't even know it exists. The employer, on the other hand, has full visibility into every salary across the organization. This information asymmetry is precisely what Directive 2023/970 seeks to correct.

Hiring Becomes the First Frontier of Transparency

Article 5 eliminates one of the main channels through which inequality is reproduced at the hiring stage: the proposed salary will need to be disclosed to candidates, either in the job posting or before the first interview, and it will become illegal to ask candidates about their salary history. This reversal neutralizes the mechanism by which inequality perpetuates itself from the moment someone joins an organization. Candidates who disclose their salary history risk ending up with pay anchored to their past earnings rather than the value of the role, under negotiating conditions that research consistently shows are structurally more disadvantageous for women.

Article 7 then establishes an individual right: any employee will be able to request, in writing, a comparison of their pay level against the average pay for comparable roles, broken down by gender. This right creates concrete access to information. Article 18, in turn, draws out the legal consequences. In the event of a dispute, the employer will have to prove that discrimination does not exist, the burden of proof no longer falls on the employee. Any undocumented pay decision becomes a liability the moment a gap can be established. The remedies available in cases of proven discrimination cover back pay, missed bonuses, and moral damages, with no cap.

Reporting: Why 2026 Is the Reference Year

Article 9 requires regular reporting on seven specific indicators: the mean gross pay gap, the median gross pay gap, the same two gaps calculated on variable and supplementary components, the proportion of women and men receiving variable components, the proportion in each pay quartile, and the gap by worker category. Obligations are staggered by company size: companies with 250 or more employees must report annually, those with 150 to 249 employees will report every three years starting in 2027, and companies with 100 to 149 employees will enter the framework in 2031. France has indicated it intends to extend these obligations to companies with 50 or more employees.

In other words, for companies with 150 or more employees, the first reports due in 2027 will cover pay decisions made as early as 2026.

FRENCH TRANSPOSITION: A LOT OF NOISE, LITTLE CERTAINTY

A European Delay That Protects No One

France is neither the furthest ahead nor the furthest behind. As of April 30, 2026, with the exception of Slovakia, no member state has fully completed national transposition. Belgium is often held up as the positive counterexample: the Wallonia-Brussels Federation was the first EU jurisdiction to transpose the directive, with its decree adopted on May 16, 2024, and taking effect on January 1, 2025. The reality is more nuanced, however: this covers only the federated public sector, while the private-sector framework has still not been finalized.

Germany still had no draft bill as of April 30, 2026, despite a government commission's report submitted in November 2025. Sweden announced in March 2026 that it considers the directive too restrictive and requested a renegotiation at the European level, which was denied.

Several member states are therefore exposed to infringement proceedings. Against this backdrop, France's delay is fairly typical though this does not exempt anyone from the obligations set out in the European text.

What the March 6 French Draft Already Confirms

An initial draft was submitted to social partners on March 6, 2026. It sets the application threshold at 50 employees, below the European floor of 100. It confirms the requirement to include salary ranges in job postings, as well as the ban on asking candidates about their salary history. On job categorization the linchpin of the entire framework the text provides that it be established through a company or sector-wide agreement, or, failing that, by unilateral employer decision valid for three years following consultation with the Works Council (CSE). The March 19 consultation ended with notable disagreements: labor unions unanimously criticized a text that leaves too many structural points to be defined by decrees whose content remains unknown.

The Gray Areas That Remain Most Sensitive

The pay base used for reporting purposes will be specified by decree. The level of penalties remains unclear. And the operational definition of "work of equal value" under French law has yet to be settled — this is precisely the concept most likely to generate litigation risk for organizations, and it is also the one that remains undecided.

These uncertainties call for vigilance on the workstreams that directly depend on them, particularly the overhaul of job classification systems. They do not justify inaction on the obligations whose framework has been set since May 2023.

Two Frameworks to Manage in Parallel

Companies with 50 or more employees will need to simultaneously meet their obligations under the current gender equality index whose 2026 cycle marks the last edition in its current form while preparing for the new framework taking effect in 2027, which uses different indicators that don't automatically replace the old ones. The immediate priority is to map existing gaps against the seven new indicators under Article 9, in order to identify any exposure before the new framework takes effect.

WHY WAITING IS PROBABLY THE WORST CALCULATION

A Still-Underestimated Risk

The first mandatory report for companies with 150 or more employees will be due in June 2027 and will cover fiscal year 2026 data. An organization that waits for the law to be enacted before starting its work will only receive the final text in fall 2026, with implementing decrees rolled out over several additional months and will then face a reporting deadline covering a year it never structured. Job categories won't have been defined or negotiated. Data won't have been cleaned. That year's pay decisions won't have been documented. The legislative delay won't have pushed back the deadline. It will simply have eaten into the preparation window.

According to the Littler European Employer Survey 2025, conducted among general counsel and HR directors across Europe, only 24% of respondents describe themselves as "very prepared" a figure up just 3 points from 2024. In France, according to the 2026 Esteval study, only 13.5% of companies equipped with an HRIS have a digitized job or grade framework in place.

What Can Already Be Invoked Without Waiting for French Law

Article 157 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union enshrines the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. This principle can be directly invoked by an employee against a private employer, without going through national legislation: the Court of Justice of the European Union confirmed this in the Tesco Stores ruling (C-624/19, June 3, 2021).

Directive 2023/970 reinforces this principle by introducing new pay transparency obligations. Some of its provisions, where sufficiently precise and unconditional, could influence how national courts interpret the law once the transposition deadline has passed.

That said, whether a job candidate can directly invoke Article 5 of the directive against a private employer remains legally uncertain at this stage.

In any case, the cost of implementation remains limited relative to the potential legal risk, particularly for simple measures such as publishing salary ranges in job postings.

The Most Advanced Organizations Won't Be the Ones That Waited

Among the organizations that have already begun working on this issue, some have already launched reviews of their pay scales or internal job classifications. This is essential work, since getting a real handle on the data, existing gaps, and pay mechanisms takes time, iteration, and gradual trade-offs. It cannot be improvised.

This holds true even though the legal and methodological framework will keep evolving. Interpretations of "work of equal value" built unilaterally by an employer may not be fully upheld under French law and could be revisited during labor negotiations.

In this context, these organizations will likely need to adjust systems they already considered settled. But these recalibrations will generally be easier to manage than a compliance effort launched in a rush as the first regulatory deadlines approach.

Three Distinct Risks, Three Different Timelines

The nature of the exposure depends on the organization's profile and unfolds across three levels of increasing severity.

First, the administrative risk: failure to meet reporting obligations will expose employers to financial penalties that the directive requires to be effective, proportionate, and dissuasive. For companies with 150 or more employees, this risk becomes concrete as early as June 2027, with the first reporting obligations.

Next, the labor litigation risk, triggered by the combination of Articles 7 and 18: an employee will be able to obtain information on pay levels, identify a gap, and initiate proceedings in which the employer must objectively justify its decision-making criteria. This risk does not depend on any size threshold. It hinges on the organization's ability to document its pay practices, promotions, and evaluation mechanisms. At the collective level, these new transparency obligations will also strengthen employee representatives' ability to challenge employers on identified gaps and demand explanations regarding pay and career-advancement criteria.

Finally, the discrimination risk is the most serious of the three, as it can trigger the employer's civil liability and, depending on how it is classified under domestic law, expose the organization and its leadership to criminal consequences. When a pay gap is legally classified as discrimination, the remedies provided under Article 18 are full and uncapped. This risk applies to all organizations, regardless of size. For senior leadership, this is no longer just an HR issue it's a legal, financial, and reputational risk.

ARE YOU REALLY READY?

Four questions can help concretely gauge an organization's current exposure:

Your seven Article 9 indicators: can you calculate them using 2026 data exactly as it exists today in your HRIS, without prior cleanup? Particularly the seventh, which requires identifying and measuring unexplained pay gaps through statistical modeling of explanatory factors?
Your job categorization: is it already formalized, or does it still depend on negotiations that haven't yet begun?
Do you know your own pay criteria well enough to explain any gaps already observed?
Do your job postings published this week already include a salary range?

Most organizations that have "gotten started" can answer one sometimes two of these questions.

The directive won't invent inequality. It already exists, embedded in HRIS data, pay stubs, and decisions that have never been questioned or formalized. What the directive will do is simply remove the option of ignoring it. And these conditions are already, at least in part, in place regardless of what the French Parliament does, or doesn't, adopt next fall.

Have a project? Contact us to discuss it…

Find out more about our customer projects!

[1] Directive (UE) 2023/970 du Parlement européen et du Conseil du 10 mai 2023. Journal officiel de l’Union européenne, 17 mai 2023.

[2] OCDE, Pay Transparency in Progress: Valuing Jobs, Closing Gender Pay Gaps, 2026.

[3] UNSA, « Directive Transparence salariale : la fin d’un tabou ! », analyse juridique, mars 2026.

[4] L&E Global / Innovires, « EU Pay Transparency Directive: Transposition Status Across the 27 Member States as of April 2026 », 20 avril 2026.

[5] EY Société d’Avocats, « Transparence salariale : que prévoit le premier projet de loi enfin dévoilé ? », mars 2026.

[6] Barthélémy Avocats, « Transparence salariale 2026 : guide DRH pour se préparer ».

[7] CSE Matin, « Transparence salariale : l’état d’avancement du projet de loi du Gouvernement », avril 2026.

[8] Bulletin Joly Travail, 2026-n5, « Catégorisation des emplois dans le cadre de la transparence salariale : un chantier majeur aux contours incertains ».

[9] Littler, « European Employer Survey Report 2025 ».

[10] Esteval, « Transparence salariale : 7,2 % d’écart inexpliqué à poste égal F/H », étude 2026.