May 31, 2026
Category:
Pay Equity LegislationAuthor:
Adam Seoudi
/
Head of CX
Bulgaria has published a draft law implementing Directive (EU) 2023/970 on pay transparency and equal pay. The draft itself is short - just six pages - but it is dense. It does not simply introduce a gender pay gap reporting obligation. It rewires parts of the existing anti-discrimination framework, adds new employee information rights and gives the Commission for Protection against Discrimination a central monitoring role.
The approach is worth watching because Bulgaria appears to be treating the Directive primarily as an anti-discrimination instrument. Pay transparency is not framed as a standalone HR compliance topic. It is framed as a way to enforce the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value.
The materials explain that Bulgaria must transpose Directive 2023/970 by 7 June 2026. The short remaining period is used as the justification for an accelerated public consultation process. The documents also point out that failure to transpose on time could lead to infringement proceedings and financial sanctions.
That context matters. The Bulgarian draft is still a draft, but the timeline pressure is real. Employers should not treat this as an abstract policy discussion. The draft is built around the EU transposition deadline and assumes that the core rules will need to apply from June 2026.
The core implementation is not placed in a new standalone pay transparency act. It is mainly an amendment to the existing Protection Against Discrimination Act.
That is not accidental. The explanatory materials state that the current Bulgarian framework already recognises the principle of equal pay, including in the Labour Code and in the Protection Against Discrimination Act, but that the existing rules are largely reactive. In other words, they prohibit discrimination, but do not provide enough proactive mechanisms to detect, measure, report and correct pay inequality before a dispute arises.
This is probably the most important point about the Bulgarian model: the draft treats pay transparency as part of anti-discrimination enforcement, not only as payroll disclosure.
The monitoring body under the draft will be the Commission for Protection against Discrimination, referred to here as CPAD.
CPAD would receive gender pay gap information from employers, publish selected structured data, collect joint pay assessment reports, analyse the causes of gender pay gaps, develop methodologies and tools, and collect data on complaints and court claims related to pay discrimination.
CPAD would also provide technical assistance and training to employers, employee representatives and trade unions in undertakings with fewer than 250 employees. This is important because the draft creates obligations that will be difficult to apply without methodology - especially around “same or equivalent work” and worker categories.
The draft therefore turns CPAD into much more than a complaints body. It gives CPAD a proactive monitoring and support role.
The general entry into force date is 7 June 2026.
The main transparency obligations should apply from that date. This includes recruitment transparency, employee information rights, accessible formats, pay secrecy restrictions and the Labour Code amendments.
The reporting and joint pay assessment rules are phased in:
The reporting deadline itself is 7 June. Employers covered by the reporting obligation must submit gender pay gap information to CPAD by 7 June for the previous calendar year.
There are also several operational deadlines inside the draft:
The draft amends Article 12 of the Protection Against Discrimination Act.
Job advertisements must use gender-neutral job titles. Employers must provide candidates with information on the basic salary or salary range for the position and permanent additional remuneration. If collective agreements apply to the employer, the candidate must also receive information on the pay conditions for the position under those agreements.
The draft also prohibits employers from requesting information about remuneration from current or previous employers. In practical terms, salary history should not be used as the starting point for salary negotiations.
Recruitment processes, job ads and interview scripts will need to be reviewed before the general entry date.
The draft strengthens the existing equal pay rules by specifying the criteria relevant to pay determination and pay increases.
The criteria must include the complexity, difficulty and responsibility of the work, working conditions, standards for quantity and quality of work, and the duration of the work performed.
The draft also introduces definitions that are necessary for measuring and comparing pay. These include “pay level”, “gender pay gap”, “median pay level”, “median pay gap”, “pay quartile”, “equivalent work” and “category of workers and employees”.
The Bulgarian draft uses the concept of workers performing the same or equivalent work. Employers will need to know how roles are grouped, why they are comparable and which criteria justify pay differences.
For employers with weak job architecture or unclear grading structures, this may become the hardest part of compliance.
The draft is also unusually specific on historical comparators. When assessing equal pay for the same or equivalent work, the employer may take into account remuneration of workers in a comparable similar position employed in a previous period, but only for a period not exceeding three years. That is a useful clarification — and one that is not always visible in other national drafts.
At the same time, the wording is quite narrow when it refers to remuneration elements determined outside the undertaking. The draft expressly mentions elements of remuneration determined by a statutory instrument or by a collective labour agreement concluded at sectoral or industry level. It does not fully resolve how employer-level policies, local arrangements or discretionary pay elements should be treated in the same analysis.
The first information right is introduced in the Protection Against Discrimination Act.
Upon written request, an employee must receive written information about:
The response deadline is two months from receipt of the request. If the information provided is inaccurate or incomplete, the employee may request further clarification, and the employer must provide a reasoned written response within 14 days.
The request can also be made through the trade union organisation in the undertaking or through CPAD. Employers must inform employees every year, by 31 January, that they have this right and how to exercise it.
There is also a confidentiality safeguard. If providing the information could reveal another employee’s individual pay, the employer may limit direct access and provide the information to the trade union organisation and/or CPAD instead. Those bodies may then advise the employee on possible claims without disclosing individual pay amounts.
This is the main Directive-style information right. It is built around sex-disaggregated pay information and the comparison between employees performing the same or equivalent work.
The most interesting Bulgarian-specific detail is in the Labour Code amendments.
The draft adds new Article 128a(2) and (3) to the Labour Code. Upon written request, the employer must provide the employee, within 14 days, with information on the average pay levels of employees at the same job level. The impact assessment describes this as available up to once a year; in the draft text itself, the annual limitation is formulated in relation to requests for additional information.
This is separate from the anti-discrimination information right.
The anti-discrimination right concerns the employee’s own remuneration and average pay levels broken down by sex for employees performing the same or equivalent work. The Labour Code right concerns average wage levels of employees at the same job level and must be answered much faster - within 14 days.
These two rights look similar, but they are not identical.
The distinction raises several practical questions:
The draft does not fully answer these questions. That makes the Labour Code amendment one of the most operationally important parts of the package.
The draft also gives a role to trade unions and employee representatives.
First, under the Labour Code amendments, during collective bargaining employers would have to provide trade unions with information on average salary levels in the undertaking by job levels, as well as the rules and procedures for determining and changing basic salaries and additional remuneration.
Second, the reporting obligation under the Protection Against Discrimination Act must be fulfilled after consultation with trade union organisations in the undertaking.
Third, the joint pay assessment must be prepared after consultation with employee representatives and/or trade union organisations.
Fourth, the joint pay assessment results must be provided to employees, employee representatives, trade union organisations and CPAD. It must also be provided to the Labour Inspectorate upon request.
The Bulgarian model therefore combines individual rights, collective involvement and institutional monitoring.
The reporting obligation applies to employers with 100 or more employees, but it is phased in.
Employers with 250 or more employees report annually. Employers with 100 to 249 employees report every three years, subject to the phased start dates: 2027 for 150+ and 2031 for 100–149.
The report must include seven indicators:
If the information shows a difference of at least 5% in the average pay level of women and men in a particular category of workers, the employer must prepare and submit a justification to CPAD. This is not only an internal explanation: the draft expressly requires the justification to be filed with the monitoring body.
Employers must also provide the category-level information to trade union organisations in the undertaking and to all employees. Upon request, it must also be provided to the Labour Inspectorate.
There is another important information layer here. If employees, trade union organisations within the undertaking, the Labour Inspectorate or CPAD request additional information relating to the reported gender pay gap information, the employer must provide it within one month. This mechanism is not drafted as dependent on the 5% threshold; it is a separate right to request additional information connected with the reported data.
Reporting is only the first layer.
If pay differences between men and women are not justified according to the objective criteria, the employer must take corrective measures within six months, after consultation with trade unions and/or CPAD.
A joint pay assessment is required where three conditions are met:
The joint pay assessment must cover the gender composition of each category, average pay levels and additional remuneration by sex, the differences in average pay levels, the reasons for those differences, corrective measures and the effectiveness of previous corrective measures.
It must also include the share of women and men who received a pay increase after returning from pregnancy, childbirth, childcare or adoption leave, where such an increase occurred for the relevant category during the leave period.
When applying corrective measures, the employer must analyse existing gender-neutral job-level evaluation systems or create such systems. Unjustified pay differences must then be corrected within one year.
This is a strong signal: employers will need not only pay data, but also a defensible methodology for job evaluation and pay progression.
The draft bans clauses in individual and collective employment contracts that restrict employees from disclosing information about their individual remuneration.
The Labour Code amendments go further and state that collective agreements, individual employment contracts, internal salary rules and other employer acts may not contain such restrictions.
At the same time, the draft allows employers to require that information obtained under the employee information right is used only for exercising the right to equal pay in the undertaking.
So the draft removes pay secrecy, but does not make all pay-related information freely usable for any purpose.
The draft also adds a data protection provision. Processing of personal data in connection with the new obligations must comply with GDPR and Bulgarian personal data protection law.
Employers must also provide information under the recruitment and employee information provisions in a format accessible to persons with disabilities, taking into account their specific needs.
These points may look technical, but they matter. Pay transparency will involve sensitive compensation data, category-level comparisons and potentially small groups where individual pay may be identifiable.
The draft itself does not create a separate pay-transparency penalty table. Instead, the new obligations are inserted into the Protection Against Discrimination Act.
The impact assessment points to the existing sanctions regime under that Act. It refers to sanctions for individuals and legal entities, higher sanctions for repeated infringements and higher amounts for failure to comply with final decisions of CPAD or a court.
This fits the overall design. Bulgaria is not building pay transparency as a separate reporting-only regime. It is embedding it into anti-discrimination enforcement.
The Bulgarian draft is short, but implementation will not be simple.
Employers should start with five workstreams.
First, recruitment. Job titles, job ads and candidate communication should be reviewed. Salary ranges and permanent additional remuneration should be ready to disclose.
Second, pay governance. Employers need objective and gender-neutral criteria for pay determination and pay increases.
Third, job architecture. The draft depends on categories of employees performing the same or equivalent work. The Labour Code amendment also introduces the concept of the same job level. These concepts need to be mapped before employees start making requests.
Fourth, information request processes. Employers will need separate workflows for the two-month anti-discrimination request and the 14-day Labour Code request.
Fifth, reporting readiness. Employers above the thresholds should prepare data for the seven reporting indicators and think ahead about how they would justify or correct gaps of 5% or more.
Bulgaria’s draft implementation of Directive 2023/970 is more than a reporting obligation.
It is a shift from reactive equal pay protection to proactive transparency, monitoring and correction. The main legal home is the Protection Against Discrimination Act. CPAD becomes the monitoring and support body. Employees receive new information rights. Trade unions and employee representatives become part of the process. Larger employers must prepare for reporting and joint pay assessments.
The most interesting detail is the additional Labour Code information right: average wage levels for employees at the same job level, within 14 days.
That may become a very practical issue very quickly.
Six pages of draft law. A lot of compliance work behind them.
