The Pay Transparency Directive (EU) 2023/970

The EU Pay Transparency Directive has been adopted and is applicable EU law. But what you as a Danish employer must specifically do depends on the Danish transposition act - and that is still only a draft. Here is what the directive requires, what the Danish draft proposes, and why ongoing documentation is your defence.

The directive and the deadline

The directive is Directive (EU) 2023/970 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 May 2023 on pay transparency (the Pay Transparency Directive). Member States must transpose it into national law by 7 June 2026 at the latest (Article 34). The directive is the minimum requirement - what a Danish employer must do in practice follows from the Danish act that transposes it.

Who reports, and when

The reporting obligation falls into four bands by number of workers. The dates below are fixed calendar dates in the directive (Article 9) - not “a number of years after each individual Member State’s transposition”.

The report covers seven data points (Article 9(1)): among others the gender pay gap, the gap in variable and complementary pay components, the median pay gap, the proportion of female and male workers in each pay quartile band, and the gap broken down by category of workers. Note that the bands concern the report itself only - the obligations on recruitment and information below apply more broadly, regardless of how many employees you have.

The Danish transposition - draft, not applicable law

The Danish rules sit in the Bill to amend the Equal Pay Act, which was in external consultation on Hoeringsportalen (consultation 71101), published on 26 February 2026 with a consultation deadline of 27 March 2026. The draft proposes entry into force on 1 January 2027 (§ 4). As of 23 June 2026 no L-numbered bill has been confirmed as tabled, and nothing appears on retsinformation.dk; a Danish general election was held on 24 March 2026, which adds uncertainty to the timeline. Therefore read the points here as proposals, and re-verify the status before acting on them.

• Base threshold: 100+ workers (proposed § 5 a). An employer with at least 100 workers must prepare a pay report.
• Conditional extension to 50–99 (proposed § 5 b(6)) - only where there are at least 8 workers of each gender in the same category of workers as measured by the 6-digit DISCO code, and with agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing excepted. A flat “applies to everyone with 50+” reading is therefore wrong.
• Cadence (proposed § 5 c): 250+ and 150–249 report for the first time by 1 September 2028 at the latest; 100–149 (and qualifying 50–99) for the first time by 1 September 2031 at the latest.
• Statistics Denmark prepares the report (proposed § 5 b): Statistics Denmark - or an employers’ organisation that receives the data - prepares and sends the pay report free of charge, grouped by 6-digit DISCO code.
• Joint pay assessment (proposed § 5 f(2)): required where the report shows an unexplained average pay gap of at least 5 % in a category of workers that has not been remedied within six months.
• New authority (proposed § 7): the Labour Market Institute for Equal Pay.
• Enforcement: the draft introduces no new fines. The new obligations are backed by compensation and by the reversed burden of proof (proposed § 6(3)–(4)) - not by fines. No monetary amount has been set.

What the directive requires of an employer

• Transparency in recruitment (Article 5): applicants have the right to be informed of the starting pay or pay range before the job interview, and you may not ask about their pay history (Article 5(2)).
• Right to information (Article 7): a worker may request in writing information about their own pay level and about the average pay levels broken down by gender for the same work or work of equal value. You must respond within two months (Article 7(4)). Workers may not be prevented from disclosing their own pay for the purpose of enforcing the equal pay principle (Article 7(5)).
• Gender pay-gap reporting (Article 9): as the bands above.
• Joint pay assessment (Article 10): triggered by an unexplained gap of at least 5 % in a category of workers that has not been remedied within six months.
• Gender-neutral job evaluation (Article 4(4)): pay structures and the criteria for comparing work must be based on objective, gender-neutral criteria - skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions.

The evidence is your defence

The directive shifts the burden of proof. Distinguish between three rules (Article 18):

• Article 18(1): when a worker establishes facts from which it may be presumed that there has been discrimination, it is for the employer to prove that there has been no discrimination.
• Article 18(2): where the employer has not complied with the transparency obligations in Articles 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10, the burden of proof lies with the employer
  • unless the breach was manifestly unintentional and of minor significance.
• Article 18(5): the rules do not apply to criminal proceedings, unless national law provides otherwise.

That is why maintained, current documentation - your criteria, your evidence, your audit trail - is what you actually have to produce if a pay gap is challenged. An employer without documented, gender-neutral pay criteria stands weak.

On penalties the directive sets only a minimum: they must be effective, proportionate to the breach and dissuasive, and they must include fines set under national law (Article 23). The directive states no amount - the Member States do.