Following the consultation procedure, the MLSA revised the draft legislation transposing the Pay Transparency Directive. The new version is available here. Compared to the information provided in our April HR Legal Update, the following changes have been made:
- The obligation to provide information on starting pay has been moved to a later stage, namely no later than before the employment contract is concluded. Under the original proposal, employers were required to inform applicants of the minimum level of pay before negotiations on the conclusion of the employment contract commenced.
- Failure to comply with the written-form requirement when agreeing on pay will not affect the validity of the arrangement if the employee begins to perform work. Such failure will nevertheless constitute a breach of the Labour Code for which the labour inspectorate may impose a fine.
- The wording has been clarified to provide that the remuneration system may be agreed in a collective agreement or, alternatively, established by the employer in internal regulations. The obligation to divide jobs into groups according to their value remains unchanged. The explanatory memorandum expressly states that factors such as the market value of the work, an employee’s accident-free record or absence record may not be taken into account when determining the value of work and remuneration for work. The explanatory memorandum now also states that the remuneration system does not need to specify payments or benefits provided by the employer in an amount prescribed by law.
- As regards the remuneration of agency workers, the original intention to require the employment agency to remunerate employees in accordance with the user undertaking’s remuneration system has been revised. Under the new proposal, before agreeing, setting or determining remuneration, the agency must obtain the user undertaking’s consent to its amount and structure. The user undertaking must provide the agency with the relevant part of its remuneration system and inform it of subsequent changes affecting the remuneration of assigned employees.
- The conditions triggering a pay assessment have been clarified. The obligation arises where the difference in the average hourly level of remuneration for work and other monetary or non-monetary benefits between women and men within a particular category of work amounts to at least 5%, cannot be justified and is not remedied within six months.
- For the purposes of the pay assessment, the proposal now expressly refers to average gross annual and hourly remuneration. When assessing pay progression following an employee’s return, an absence from work due to the provision of long-term care has also been added alongside maternity, paternity and parental leave.
- The role of the Public Defender of Rights in pay assessments has been limited. Section 287d will no longer require employers to provide a pay assessment to the Public Defender of Rights upon request. The obligation to provide it to the labour inspectorate remains and is now expressly limited to the purposes of its inspection activities. The employer’s right to request an opinion from the Public Defender of Rights on the implementation of remedial measures has also been removed.
- The individual employee’s right to information on remuneration under Section 306b has been amended. The proposal now expressly provides that:
- information must be provided in writing;
- the information must relate to the preceding calendar year; an employee may submit such a request only once per calendar year;
- any explanation or supplementary information must also be provided in writing; and
- where the information would result in the disclosure of the remuneration of a specific other employee, the employer will not provide that information directly to the requesting employee.
- Protection of individual remuneration data – under the original proposal, where information concerning remuneration within a category could not be disclosed to an employee because it would make another employee identifiable, the employer was required to provide the information to the Public Defender of Rights. Under the revised proposal, the employer will not provide the sensitive part of the information to the employee, and the employee may designate a trade union to which the employer must provide it. Where no trade union operates at the employer, the employee will not have access to such information.
- A similar procedure is introduced in relation to the report on pay differences under Section 306c. The deadline for providing an explanation or supplementary information has been changed from “without undue delay” to two months. In addition, a right to request available information from reports covering the previous four years has been added.
- Section 306d introduces an express obligation on employment agencies to maintain confidentiality regarding non-public information obtained from the user undertaking, not to use such information for any other purpose and not to disclose it to third parties without the user undertaking’s consent. The confidentiality obligation continues even after the temporary assignment has ended.
- The consequences of breaches of pay transparency obligations in court proceedings have been expanded. The reversal of the burden of proof will no longer apply only to breaches of Sections 30, 109a, 306a and 346a, but also to obligations concerning consultation on the report, joint pay assessments, the individual right to information, reporting obligations and obligations under the Labour Inspection Act.
HR Legal Update 07,08/2026 here.