While the European Directive on pay transparency, adopted in 2023, must be transposed into national legislation by June 2026, implementation of the principle of equal pay for work of equal value is still struggling within the European Union. This is one of the main findings of the report on moving “from principle to practice” in the field of pay equity, published on Tuesday 6 January by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound).
Nearly seven decades after the principle of “equal pay for equal work” was enshrined in the 1957 Treaty of Rome, the gaps remain, and in 2023 women’s gross hourly earnings in the EU were still 12.0% lower than men’s, according to Eurostat.
Similarly, the disparities between Member States - Luxembourg has the lowest gap (0.9%), while Latvia has the highest (19.0%) - help to demonstrate the slow pace of progress and the still significant presence of systemic factors, in particular the under-valuation of female-dominated jobs.
The Eurofound report identifies a concept that is still poorly understood, namely equal pay for work of equal value, which does not refer to identical jobs, but to different jobs involving comparable levels of skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions.
Based on sixteen case studies from 13 Member States, the agency analyses job classification and evaluation tools, initiatives at company level and the role of the social partners, particularly in the context of sectoral collective agreements.
Preparations for the Directive’s entry into force throughout the EU remain incomplete at this stage. And for good reason: in September 2025, only a few Member States (Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden) as well as Norway “have incorporated both work of equal value definitions and pay transparency tools in their national legal frameworks”.
For Eurofound, the transposition of the Directive is decisive, but insufficient. It must be supported by analytical tools, reliable data and the commitment of the social partners.
The report: https://aeur.eu/f/k71
The Pay Transparency Directive: https://aeur.eu/f/izo (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)