April 17, 2026
Slovakia goes first with their implementation of the EU Pay Transparency directive.
Category:
Pay Equity LegislationAuthor:
Adam Seoudi
/
Head of CX
On 15 April 2026, the National Council of the Slovak Republic adopted the new Equal Pay Act. The final text shows that Slovakia is not implementing the EU Pay Transparency Directive as a narrow reporting exercise. The Act creates a much broader compliance framework covering pay structures, employee categories, work-value criteria, recruitment transparency, employee information rights, reporting, corrective action, joint pay assessment, remedies, and Labour Code amendments.
The first point employers should not miss is the distinction between employee categories and work-value criteria. A category of employees consists of workers performing the same work or work of equal value, and where employee representatives exist, those categories are determined by the employer after consultation with them. By contrast, the criteria used to assess work value and build the pay structure must be agreed with employee representatives. The Act expressly defines employee representatives as the relevant trade union body, works council, or employee representative. That is not a technical distinction; it creates two different compliance obligations.
The Act also defines what a compliant pay structure must be able to do. It must make it possible to assess whether employees perform work of equal value, using objective criteria that are not directly or indirectly based on gender. The memorandum makes clear that Slovakia is not mandating one single methodology, but it is requiring an objective, transparent, defensible methodology that can support job comparison across the organisation.
The timing is especially tight. Employers established before 7 June 2026 must comply with the pay-structure obligation by 31 July 2026. In parallel, the Ministry of Labour must publish analytical tools and methodologies by 30 June 2026. In practice, this leaves employers with very little time to build or redesign job architecture, consult on categories, agree work-value criteria, and embed a functioning pay structure before the first hard compliance deadline hits.
The Slovak package also starts before employment begins. Job applicants must receive information on the starting salary or salary range for the role, determined on the basis of the pay-structure criteria, as well as the relevant provisions of the collective agreement if remuneration is also governed by one. The employer must provide this information early enough to enable informed and transparent pay negotiations, and the obligation is deemed fulfilled if the information appears in the published job posting. The employer may not ask applicants about their current or previous remuneration. The memorandum stresses that this is designed to reduce information asymmetry and stop historical pay gaps from being carried from one job to the next.
During employment, the Act adds another layer of transparency. Employers must make available to employees the criteria used to determine compensation, set compensation levels, and increase compensation. Those criteria must be objective and non-discriminatory. Employers with fewer than 50 employees are exempt from the obligation to make available the criteria for pay progression, but not from the underlying requirement that their criteria be objective and non-discriminatory.
The right to information is one of the most practically important parts of the law. Employees may request written information on their own remuneration level and on the average remuneration, broken down by gender, for the category of employees performing the same work or work of equal value. The Act ties remuneration level to the calendar year, gives employers two months to respond, and adds a second step: if the answer is inaccurate or incomplete, the employee may request additional and substantiated explanations, which must be provided within 30 days. The employee may also use employee representatives or the Slovak National Center for Human Rights to exercise this right. Employers must remind employees once a year of this right and the procedure for using it. At the same time, the employer may not prevent an employee from disclosing their own remuneration, and contractual pay-secrecy clauses covering the employee’s own pay are invalid. The employer may, however, require confidentiality regarding average pay data under § 6(1)(b), except where the employee is pursuing equal-pay rights.
The transitional rules make this information right more nuanced than it first appears. The Act provides that the information under § 6(1)(b) - average remuneration broken down by gender in the relevant employee category is to be provided for the first time for the year 2027. A careful reading suggests a practical two-stage rollout: from 7 June 2026, employees can use the right to obtain information on their own pay level, while the category-average gender-broken data will likely become fully usable only once 2027 data exists and can be processed, which in practice points to 2028. That is an inference rather than express statutory wording, but it is a grounded one.
On reporting, the Slovak model follows the Directive’s basic structure but adds important operational detail. Employers with 250 or more employees must submit an annual remuneration report by 15 April for the preceding calendar year. Employers with 100 to 249 employees must report every three years, also by 15 April, for the preceding calendar year. For the relevant provisions, the number of employees is defined as the average number of employees on record for the preceding calendar year. Reports must be submitted after consultation with employee representatives, who also have the right to access the methodologies used to prepare them. The report covers not only the overall pay gap, but also the gap in supplementary remuneration components, median gaps, quartile distribution, and category-level pay-gap data broken down by base pay and supplementary components.
The transitional reporting cycle is particularly important. Employers with at least 150 employees must submit the first remuneration report by 7 June 2027, covering the period from 1 August 2026 to 31 December 2026. Employers with 100 to 149 employees do not file their first report until 7 June 2031, for the year 2030. This means the first operational pressure falls much sooner on larger employers, even though smaller in-scope employers still need to start building the architecture behind the law well before their first formal filing deadline.
The Act then builds an intermediate layer between reporting and formal joint assessment. Employees, employee representatives, the Labour Inspectorate, and the Slovak National Center for Human Rights may request additional clarification regarding the category-level pay-gap information provided under the reporting rules, including explanations of remuneration differences. The employer must provide a reasoned response within 30 days. If the differences cannot be justified by objective, non-discriminatory criteria, the employer must take corrective measures in cooperation with employee representatives. This mechanism is important because it does not depend on a 5% threshold. That threshold becomes relevant later.
The formal joint pay assessment is triggered only where three conditions are met together: the remuneration report shows an average pay gap of at least 5% in an employee category; the employer has not justified that difference on objective, non-discriminatory grounds; and the unjustified difference has not been eliminated within six months of submission of the report. The assessment must then be carried out with employee representatives, and the Act specifies in detail what it must contain, including analysis of category composition, pay differences, reasons for gaps, measures to eliminate them, and review of the effectiveness of earlier measures.
The package also includes meaningful rules on personal data, remedies, and enforcement. If the remuneration of a specific employee could be identified from information provided under the Act, access is restricted to employee representatives, the Labour Inspectorate, and the Slovak National Center for Human Rights. A person harmed by a violation of the right to equal pay has a right to monetary compensation, including unpaid remuneration, lost opportunities, non-pecuniary damage, other damage, and interest on arrears. The limitation period is three years, and the burden of proof shifts to the employer if the employer has breached obligations under §§ 4, 5, 6, 8, or 9, unless the employer proves the breach was clearly unintentional and minor.
Another underappreciated feature sits in § 13. For the purposes of equal-pay assessment, comparison is not limited to employees of the same employer. The Act also permits comparison across different employers where remuneration conditions are determined by a single source, and it allows hypothetical comparison where no direct comparator exists. The memorandum explicitly links this design to CJEU case law, especially the Tesco Stores judgment.
The sanction for failing to comply with the reporting obligation is also clear. If the employer fails to submit the report even after being given an additional deadline, the Ministry of Labour must impose a fine of between EUR 4,000 and EUR 8,000. The memorandum adds that the penalty is intended to be proportionate and grounded in objective liability for failure to comply with the reporting duty.
Finally, the Labour Code amendment is one of the most interesting aspects of the package. The revised § 119a makes clear that employees of the same sex are also entitled to equal remuneration if they perform the same work or work of equal value, and that work of equal value is to be assessed using the same criteria as under the new equal-pay act. The memorandum confirms that this was retained deliberately for consistency.
The real message for employers is that Slovakia’s law is not just a reporting law. It is a job-architecture law, a transparency law, a reporting law, and an enforcement law all at once. The first compliance question is not simply when the first report is due. It is whether the employer can explain, document, and defend how it values work before the first employee asks.
