Ask the Navigator: Penalties Under the EU Pay Transparency Directive

By Zhuang Liu

BLOG OVERVIEW: The EU Pay Transparency Directive sets no fine levels of its own, leaving those to the 27 member states, and the resulting national regimes vary enormously. Many member states are folding pay transparency violations into existing anti-discrimination or labour-law enforcement regimes rather than building new ones; among those that have set specific fines, maximums run from roughly €6,000 in Lithuania to €225,018 in Spain, while a smaller group has added criminal liability or tied penalties to payroll size, with France’s draft reaching 2% of total payroll. Several member states have published no draft legislation at all, but that silence is not safety: the Directive’s uncapped compensation and reversed burden of proof apply regardless of what a national fine schedule says, and the transposition deadline has already passed.

Question

Now that many member states have finalized or published draft transpositions of the European Union Pay Transparency Directive (the Directive), what do the penalties for non-compliant employers actually look like, and are there any differences across member states?

Answer

This is a timely question, because penalties are an important topic of the Directive, and regional differences are something employers should pay attention to in their compliance preparation. At first glance, the Directive itself is deliberately light on laying down exact numbers for non-compliance penalties.

• Articles 16 and 17 give workers the right to full compensation including back pay, bonuses and payments in kind, lost opportunities, non-material damage and interest with no upper cap. Courts can also order employers to stop infringements and take corrective measures, with recurring penalties for non-compliance.
• Article 18 shifts the burden of proof onto any employer that has not met its transparency obligations.
• Article 23 requires each member state to set penalties for infringements of the national transposing law that are “effective, proportionate and dissuasive,” expressly including fines, and to provide for escalation for repeat offenses.
• Alongside those penalties, Article 24 adds that non-compliant employers can be shut out of public procurement.

What the Directive does not do is set the actual fine levels; it hands that pen to the 27 member states. As it turns out, penalties have been approached quite differently across member states. Reviewing the transposing texts and drafts country by country, four broad observations emerge:

• Many member states are building on their existing anti-discrimination penalties;
• A number of member states have introduced specific administrative fines, with substantial variation in the amounts and structures of those penalties;
• Some member states have gone further by making the penalties proportionate to payroll size/turnover or by introducing additional criminal liability;
• Several member states have not yet legislated at all.

Observation 1: Many member states are relying on existing enforcement frameworks

The first notable pattern is that many member states chose continuity over novelty, incorporating pay transparency violations into existing anti-discrimination, equal pay, or labour-law enforcement regimes rather than creating an entirely new structure.

• Italy is the clearest example: rather than invent transparency-specific fines, Legislative Decree No. 96/2026 routes enforcement through the existing Equal Opportunities Code (Legislative Decree 198/2006). Violations trigger Article 41, which provides for revocation of benefits and, in serious or repeat cases, exclusion from public contracts for up to two years.
• Bulgaria’s draft channels enforcement through amendments to its existing Protection Against Discrimination Act and Labour Code rather than a standalone sanctions schedule. Confirmed unjustified pay differences carry a one-year corrective-measure window.
• Ireland is proceeding through the General Scheme of the Equality (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024 with penalties not yet specified.
• Sweden has formally withdrawn its transposition bill, but the operative regime remains the existing Discrimination Act, under which the Equality Ombudsman enforces the law through penalty orders. Employers face economic and non-economic damages.
• For Greece, violations of the pay transparency obligations are treated as violations of labour legislation under Article 572 of the Greek Labour Code.
• In Portugal’s newly published draft, sanction details largely follow the existing Labour Code, with violations of most provisions such as pay reporting and right to information constituting a serious administrative offense.
• Estonia, though it has enacted its law, introduces no specific transparency penalties for now and falls back on its general equal-treatment framework.
• For Spain, sanctions follow the existing framework established by the Law on Infractions and Sanctions in the Social Order (LISOS).
• Denmark’s draft keeps its Equal Pay Act largely intact, indicating that unless a higher penalty applies under other legislation, there will be fines for non-compliance with pay reporting obligations. However, it does not specify the amount of the fine.

Observation 2: Where member states have specified fines, the amounts vary considerably

Many member states have developed detailed schedules with concrete numbers on penalties. These penalties cover non-compliance including failures relating to pay transparency and employee right-to-information, pay gap reporting, and also joint pay assessments if applicable. Comparing numbers established by different member states, we observe wide variation in the monetary penalties by these states.

• In Lithuania, administrative fines under the Code of Administrative Offenses range from €500 - €1,450 for equal pay violations, increasing to €1,450 - €3,000 for repeat violations and €2,700 - €6,000 for intentional violations. Failure to provide required pay information may result in fines of €460 - €700, or €700 - €1,400 for repeat violations.
• In Italy, general pay transparency violations under Legislative Decree 96/2026 carry fines of €250 - €1,500, rising to €5,000 - €10,000 for established discrimination, with possible procurement exclusion. Separately, Italy’s existing biennial gender equality report (Law 162/2021) fines incomplete filings €1,000 - €5,000 and can cost non-compliant employers their social-security contribution exemption.
• Bulgaria imposes €250 to €2,000 for individuals and €500 to €5,000 for legal entities for failure to comply with new employer transparency and reporting obligations - which are doubled for repeated violations, and €10,000 to €20,000 for failure to comply with decisions of the Commission for Protection Against Discrimination Court.
• Slovakia gives employers a 15-day remediation window before a reporting failure may result in a fine of €4,000 - €8,000, depending on severity, with penalties assessed within two years. The Act also expands the Labour Inspectorate’s authority over other employer obligations, with fines of up to €100,000, but does not include a specific repeat-offender provision.
• Poland’s provisions reach PLN 2,000 - PLN 60,000 (about €470 - €14,100) and, notably, fall on the individuals acting for the employer.
• Romania’s draft fixes fines at 3 to 5 gross national minimum wages (about €2,500 - €4,100) for a first violation and 5 to 10 gross national minimum wages (about €4,100 - €8,200) for repeat offenses.
• Finland’s penalties consist of a “neglect fee” of €5,000 - €80,000 for missing the deadline to file a joint pay assessment. and employees are entitled to compensation for pay discrimination with compensation ranging from a minimum of approximately €4,360 to a maximum of approximately €21,800.
• In Sweden’s earlier transposition proposal, penalties for failure to submit required reports ranged from 0.5 to 8 price base amounts (approximately SEK 29,400 - 470,400 / €2,600 - 41,600). Although that proposal has since been withdrawn, similar penalty provisions may be included in the final transposition. In the meantime, the existing Discrimination Act applies; however, it does not specify a fixed monetary fine for violations of its pay transparency or equal pay requirements.
• For Czechia, the fines are capped at CZK 1,000,000 (€41,000) for major breaches such as failure to fulfill key reporting requirements. For other minor breaches, the fines are capped at CZK 400,000 (€16,000).
• In Latvia, fines for violations of this law are capped for corporate employers at the equivalent of €14,000 (the current cap is set at 2,800 "fine units," which is dependent on a conversion rate that is not fixed). There is also no additional fine framework for repeat offenses.
• For Greece, fines range from €300 to €50,000 per violation as imposed by the Greek Labour Code.
• In Spain, the penalties are tiered by severity, and can range from €70 to €225,018 depending on the severity of violations.

In addition, not all member states with progress on transposition have specified the amounts of the applicable fines. In the Netherlands, the Dutch Council of State has issued its advisory opinion on the legislative proposal, but the proposal does not specify the amounts of the applicable fines; these may be addressed in subsequent implementing legislation or regulations. For employers, the absence of a new or specified fine does not necessarily mean limited exposure. The Directive’s uncapped compensation and reversed burden of proof apply regardless of what the national administrative fine looks like.

Observation 3: Some member states have added more severe forms of liability

It is worth mentioning that a group of countries has further added criminal penalties for non-compliant employers, even though criminal sanctions are not required in the Directive.

• France’s draft adds existing criminal penalties for violations of the Labour Code’s professional equality provisions, with sanctions increasing to two years’ imprisonment and a fine of €7,500 if an employer commits the same offense against multiple individuals.
• In Malta, violations of the relevant provisions are criminal offenses and can cost from €2,500 to €5,000. Specifically, any offense that involves discrimination can incur costs ranging from €5,000 to €7,000, with higher punishments for repeated offenses.
• In Denmark, the law also mentions possibility of a guilty employer incurring criminal liability under the Danish Criminal Code.
• In Cyprus, non-compliance would be a criminal offense with fines up to €10,000 and/or up to six months’ imprisonment. Personal criminal liability extends to directors and officers unless they prove lack of consent or negligence.
• Belgium is transposing region by region and largely for the public sector: its Flemish draft decree promises criminal or administrative fines but has not yet set the amounts. For Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles, violations cost up to €3,900 for non-compliant public entity. Other regions like the Walloon and German-speaking communities have no sanctions-related legislations disclosed yet.

Certain member states have further linked penalties to annual payroll of non-compliant employers. For example, France, still at the draft stage, stands out as their administrative fines can be up to 1% of an employer’s total payroll for major violations such as reporting and consultation failures (which increases to 2% if the offense is repeated within five years). For a large employer, this is a fundamentally different order of magnitude than a fixed band. Other breaches, including failure to respond to an employee’s request for information, are punishable by a fine of up to €450.

Observation 4: For some member states, the enforcement picture is not yet settled

Finally, a group of member states has published no draft transposition legislation at all. As of this writing, Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Luxembourg, and Slovenia fall into this category. For employers operating there, that absence is not a reprieve. These countries remain bound by the Directive’s own baseline —“effective, proportionate and dissuasive” penalties under Article 23, and uncapped compensation under Article 16—even though the transposition deadline has already passed. Employers should not assume the wait will result in a lighter regime.

Below is a table consolidating the information above. DCI will continue to track these developments and provide updates in future editions.

Table: Maximum Penalties and Criminal Sanctions by Member State

DCI Consulting helps employers turn complex EU Pay Transparency requirements into clear, defensible pay decisions before reporting becomes mandatory. We provide software and consulting solutions to organization to establish or review worker categories, conduct required gender pay gap analyses, develop targeted remediation strategies, and provide guidance on right to information requests. Visit our EU Pay Transparency Directive page to learn how your organization can prepare to confidently meet upcoming deadlines and subsequent reporting requirements.