In 2026, a woman worker in average working in the EU still earns 11.1 percent less her male counterpart. Not because she works less, or contributes less, but because the system has been carefully designed to keep her in the dark about it.
Isabelle Schömann
Equal pay has been a founding principle of the European Union for almost 70 years. It is written into the treaties. It is proclaimed in charters. It is celebrated in speeches.
And yet, in 2026, a woman worker on average working in the EU still earns 11.1 percent less her male counterpart. Not because she works less, or contributes less, but because the system has been carefully designed to keep her in the dark about it.
The gender pay gap in the European Union remains a concrete, measurable harm to millions of women across Europe. Paying women less than men for the same job or a job of equal value is nothing short of economic violence against women workers.
Beyond the monthly paycheck, the gender pay gap feeds directly into in-work poverty and the gender pension gap, making this a lifelong financial injustice for women workers.
The secret is? It’s a secret
Pay secrecy is the engine of this system. Without access to pay data, women cannot challenge discriminatory pay, and unions cannot bargain them away.
The Pay Transparency Directive is designed to dismantle this machinery. By removing the fog that hides discrimination, it empowers workers to demand fairness and incentivises employers to fix biased practices. The calculation is simple: the benefits to millions of working women vastly outweigh the modest administrative costs to companies.
This is the reason why the European Union has legislated – the result is a directive paving the way to guarantee pay transparency and equal pay for work of equal value.
The transposition deadline of the Pay Transparency Directive has passed on 7 June 2026.
Delays and outright opposition
Only four member states, Slovakia, Italy, Lithuania and Malta, have completed transposition. By 7 June, nearly half of member states had not even published a draft national law.
Worse even, Sweden and Germany are actively opposed.
This delay is a political failure: the directive was democratically-adopted, cleared all institutional hurdles, and represents a binding legal obligation.
Member states already had three years to transpose the directive, instead of the usual two years. Yet, the additional time was used by some to undermine a democratically-adopted directive, to question its proportionality and to ultimately fuel regulatory uncertainty.
This is not happening by accident.
The delays plaguing transposition across Europe are the direct result of an intensive lobbying campaign by employer organisations determined to weaken, delay, or kill this directive.
Their claims boil down to alarming signals of regression by a coalition of political and economic actors, aiming to exert economic violence against women workers and maintain them as a cheap labour force in poorly paid sectors where they are already overrepresented.
No member state may disrespect the 1957 treaty principle or “renegotiate” a democratically-adopted directive. The rule of law ensures everyone – states, employers, and businesses alike – is accountable to publicly promulgated and equally enforced laws. No one is above the law.
Business associations claim that pay transparency measures are too complicated to implement.
Loopholes and concessions
What they don’t say is that the directive already provides for huge concessions: a 250-employee threshold for pay reporting covers only a third of EU workers, leaving two-thirds out of the loop.
In addition, employers and SMEs have been given targeted support, such as guidelines and tools tailored to business needs. Case in point: small workplaces of 100–149 employees still have five years to prepare for their first reporting, which is ample time.
The financial argument against these regulations simply doesn’t hold the line: Annual reporting costs are remarkably low, ranging from absolutely nothing in Estonia to a modest €70 in Denmark and a maximum of €281 in Germany. These are typically one-time investments, noting that pay reporting gets easier with every reporting period.
Pay transparency obligations aren’t rocket science, just common sense and social justice, based on sound evidence: empirical research shows that pay transparency works in reducing the gender pay gap. History has shown that doing nothing has a price too and its women workers who will pay it:
With the EU gender pay gap stuck at 11 percent, the average working woman loses €3,800 a year compared to her male peers. Collectively, this drains over €358bn annually from the pockets of Europe’s 92.5 million working women.
Even a modest 10 percent reduction in this gap through pay transparency would save the average woman €672 a year. Without it, the 43 million women employed by companies covered under the directive will continue to lose a collective €28bn annually. The cost of delay is simply too high.
The clock has run out. Women workers can’t wait any longer and will not carry anymore the burden of being paid lower wages, lower pensions, and lifetimes of undervaluation. Companies have benefitted from that burden for decades. Every additional year of inaction has a direct, quantifiable cost to women. They refuse to foot the bill any longer.
Member states must now face the consequences of their inaction. Infringement proceedings should follow where transposition has not occurred.
The tools exist. The evidence is overwhelming. The legal obligation is binding. What is missing is the political will to act in the interests of women workers rather than the boardrooms that profit from their exploitation.
