Pay transparency, meaning what?

Rafał Kania

The Sejm is working on another set of changes to the Labour Code. The legislation, proposed by a group of MPs, is about pay transparency. In fact it implements the EU pay transparency directive. And yet it is very hard to predict what shape it will ultimately take.

Scope of change

The house-originated bill, presented in December 2024, proposed a number of duties for businesses. In particular, it sought to give employees the right to request information about the level of their pay and about average pay levels for other employees by gender. In addition, job offers were supposed to state pay ranges (“brackets”).

However, in May 2025 the relevant parliamentary committee significantly restricted the proposed changes. The latest draft of the law runs to a mere 1 sheet of A4 paper. The proposal is that a job candidate should be given information about the applicable pay bracket and pay regulations before commencing employment, but not necessarily in the job vacancy notice itself.

What next?

The due date for directive’s implementation occurs in one year’s time, or precisely on 7 June 2026. However, the proposal is not a formal implementation of the directive because it does not originate from the government, and it is the government that is authorised to propose implementing legislation. Consequently, we should probably not expect any complete pay transparency regulation to enter into force in the coming months.