March 31, 2026
Category:
Pay Equity LegislationAuthor:
Adam Seoudi
/
Head of CX
Romania has now put forward a draft law to transpose the Pay Transparency Directive, together with an explanatory memorandum. The proposal was opened for public comment on 30 March 2026, with a consultation window running until 8 April 2026. That timing matters, because Directive (EU) 2023/970 must be transposed by 7 June 2026.
Although the draft does not set a formal entry-into-force date, it clearly preserves the Directive’s reporting timeline, which suggests that Romania is not, at this stage, proposing to postpone the core employer reporting obligations beyond the EU schedule.
The Romanian draft is broad in scope from the outset. It applies to all employers in both the public and private sectors, and to all workers, expressly including civil servants and military personnel in the public sector, while the pay transparency rules also extend to job applicants. That is fully aligned with the Directive’s public/private scope and applicant coverage.
The draft defines “equal work” or “work of equal value” as paid work that, when compared using the same indicators and units of measurement, reflects similar or equal professional knowledge and skills, and a similar or equal amount of intellectual and/or physical effort, responsibilities and working conditions. It also clarifies that comparison is not necessarily limited to workers employed by the same employer, where the relevant pay elements are set by law or collective agreement at group, sector, national or parent-undertaking level. In that respect, the Romanian draft is more concrete on the face of the definition than the Directive, which defines work of equal value mainly by reference to the objective, gender-neutral criteria in Article 4.
The draft also gives clearer institutional signposts than the Directive alone. In the law, the “equality body” is defined as the state authority responsible for discrimination matters under Government Ordinance No 137/2000. The explanatory memorandum then makes the designation explicit: Romania says that the National Council for Combating Discrimination (CNCD) meets the required independence criteria and is therefore designated as the body responsible for promoting equality. Alongside that, the memorandum presents ANES - the National Agency for Equal Opportunities between Women and Men - as the body responsible for monitoring application of the equal pay principle.
On recruitment transparency, Romania follows the Directive’s core logic but does so in a way that is worth watching closely. Employers must give candidates information on the starting pay or pay range for the role, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria, plus the relevant collective agreement provisions where applicable. But the draft does not make the job ad itself the only compliance route. Instead, the information may be included in the vacancy notice, published on the employer’s website or in another publicly accessible space, or communicated in writing to the candidate before the job interview. That means the draft does not require salary bands to appear directly in every vacancy notice, but it does require the information to reach the candidate, at the latest, before the interview.
Romania also carries over the Directive’s ban on salary-history questions and the requirement for gender-neutral job ads and job titles. These are standard transposition choices, but they matter because they tie the hiring phase directly to equal pay enforcement, rather than treating recruitment as a separate issue.
Article 6 is where the Romanian draft starts to become more distinctive. Employers must make available, inside the workplace and in an easily accessible way, the criteria used to determine pay, the pay levels, and the procedures for pay progression, if any. For workers paid from public funds, employers must also make available the pay scales. The Directive requires transparency around the criteria used to determine pay, pay levels and pay progression, but Romania’s text stands out because it speaks expressly about pay scales, and then singles out public-funds staff for an additional obligation in that area.
The Romanian draft says that, for employers with fewer than 50 workers, the obligation to provide information on the criteria for the pay progression does not apply.
Romania’s right to information rules are another area where the draft is more specific than the Directive. Workers may request and receive, in writing, either personally or through their representatives, information on their individual pay level and on average pay levels by gender for categories of workers performing the same work or work of equal value. The employer must respond within a reasonable time, but no later than 30 working days from the request. The Directive only sets a maximum of two months, so Romania is clearly opting for a shorter deadline.
The annual reminder obligation is also drafted more tightly than in the Directive. Employers must inform workers of this right and of the procedure to exercise it every year, by the end of the first quarter. The Directive requires annual information, but Romania adds a precise calendar marker.
There is also an interesting drafting choice around form. The main worker route is framed as a request and response in writing, either directly or through worker representatives. The draft does not create a general alternative saying that this may simply be done electronically. The one explicit electronic route appears in the CNCD channel: workers may request the information through the CNCD, and once the Council obtains it from the employer, the Council forwards it to applicants in electronic format. So the draft gives electronic transmission a clear place, but specifically through the equality-body route rather than as a general default for all employer responses.
Romania also adds a useful clarification that is easy to miss but may prove important in practice: if the information received is inaccurate or incomplete, workers may ask for clarifications and reasonable additional information, and must receive a reasoned response within 30 working days. The Directive provides the right to seek clarifications where the information is inaccurate or incomplete, but Romania hard-codes a concrete response period for that second round too.
On pay-gap reporting, Romania broadly follows the Directive’s model. Employers with at least 100 employees must report; employers below that threshold may do so voluntarily. The indicators are the familiar Directive set: overall gender pay gap, gap in variable pay, median gaps, proportions receiving variable pay, quartile distribution, and the category-level gap broken down by fixed and variable components.
The reporting timetable is also the familiar Directive timetable. Employers with 250+ workers report by 7 June 2027 and annually thereafter; employers with 150–249 workers report by 7 June 2027 and then every three years; employers with 100–149 workers report by 7 June 2031 and then every three years. Reports go to ANES.
At the same time, the Romanian draft makes clear that the reporting methodology, standard reporting format and exact deadlines will still need to be set by ministerial order, on the proposal of ANES. So while the legal architecture and the headline schedule are already in the draft, some of the compliance mechanics will be filled in later.
One of the more interesting enforcement points comes after reporting. Workers, worker representatives, the Regional Labour Inspectorates and the CNCD may ask employers for clarifications and additional detail about the reported data, including explanations for any gender pay gap. The employer must respond within 30 working days, with a possible extension of up to another 30 working days, and the reply must be reasoned. That is a more explicit procedural mechanism than the Directive, which speaks in broader terms about a substantiated reply within a reasonable time.
If a pay difference between women and men is not justified on objective, gender-neutral criteria, the Romanian draft then moves to remediation quickly. The employer must remedy the situation within 90 working days, in cooperation with worker representatives and, where appropriate, the Territorial Labour Inspectorate and/or the CNCD. In duly justified cases, that period may be extended, but by no more than six months. That is a notably concrete and short remedial window. The Directive requires unjustified differences to be remedied within a reasonable period of time; Romania instead pins down a specific default deadline.
The Romanian draft keeps the familiar joint pay assessment trigger. An employer falls into JPA where the report reveals an average pay gap of at least 5% in any category of workers, the employer has not justified the difference on objective, gender-neutral criteria, and the employer has not remedied the unjustified gap within six months of submitting the pay report. That is essentially the Directive model.
What Romania then adds is a clearer post-JPA expectation. The employer must implement the resulting measures and address unjustified pay differences within six months, in consultation with worker representatives, while the Labour Inspectorate, Regional Labour Inspectorate and/or CNCD may be invited to participate. The Directive says remedial measures should eliminate unjustified differences within a reasonable period of time; Romania again opts for a more definite deadline.
The Romanian draft is also explicit on how confidentiality works once individual workers could be identified. Where disclosure under the right to information, reporting or JPA provisions would directly or indirectly reveal the pay of an identifiable worker, access is restricted to worker representatives, the Territorial Labour Inspectorate or the CNCD. Those representatives, or the CNCD, may then advise workers on possible action, but without disclosing actual pay levels of individual workers performing the same work or work of equal value. This closely tracks the Directive’s data-protection logic, but Romania writes the institutional channels directly into the draft.
Romania’s penalty regime is unusually concrete at draft stage. The following are treated as offences: failure to inform candidates under Article 5, unlawful salary-history questions, failure to ensure access to remuneration criteria, refusal to provide information under Article 7, failure to comply with reporting obligations, and failure to carry out a joint pay review. The baseline fine is 10,000 to 20,000 lei. The draft then adds two aggravating layers: intersectional discrimination counts as an aggravating circumstance, and repeated violations are punishable by a higher fine of 20,000 to 30,000 lei. Detection and sanctioning sit with inspection staff in the Territorial Labour Inspectororates.
The proposal also amends the Labour Code in ways that matter for everyday compliance. Employment contracts may not prohibit or restrict workers from disclosing information about their remuneration.
One final point is sector-specific. For employers in the defence, public order and national security sectors, implementation of the applicant, recruitment, public-pay-scale and right-to-information provisions will be handled through an internal procedure to be approved within 90 days of the law entering into force.
At a high level, the Romanian proposal is a recognisable transposition of the Directive. The reporting thresholds, the 5% JPA trigger, the basic recruitment rules and the reporting indicators are all familiar. But the draft is more interesting in the places where it adds procedural specificity: 30 working days for right-to-information requests, a Q1 annual reminder, a structured CNCD route, 30+30 working days for reporting clarifications, 90 working days to remedy unjustified gaps after explanation fails, and six months to implement JPA measures. It also makes the institutional division of labour clearer by positioning ANES as monitoring body and CNCD as equality body.
