Pay transparency: the EU deadline has passed and the Romanian Senate rejected the law. The rights you still have

Imagine finding out over coffee that a colleague doing exactly the same work earns 900 lei more than you. You have no way to check. Your contract may even forbid you to talk about your salary. The EU pay transparency directive was written for precisely this situation. In Romania, putting it into practice has stalled.

What happened

Directive (EU) 2023/970 required Member States to adapt their laws by 7 June 2026. Romania missed the deadline. The bill to transpose it, registered with the Senate on 17 June 2026 as L445/2026, received a negative opinion from the Legislative Council and critical comments from the Superior Council of Magistracy. On 14 October 2026, the Senate plenary rejected it: 27 votes for, 1 against and 62 abstentions.

The rejection does not end the process. The Senate was the first chamber to examine the bill, and it has now gone to the Chamber of Deputies, which decides. Asked by the press about the delay, the Ministry of Labour gave no timetable and said only that the new rights will apply once the law is published in the Official Gazette.

The rights the directive brings

• Pay is known before the interview. Candidates must be given the starting pay or pay range, in the job ad or before the interview.
• No questions about past pay. Employers may no longer ask what you earned in your previous job.
• The right to ask. Any employee can request, in writing, their own pay level and the average pay levels, broken down by sex, for colleagues doing the same work or work of equal value. The employer must answer within two months at most.
• No secrecy clauses. You cannot be prevented from disclosing your pay.
• Reporting the gap. Companies with at least 150 employees report the gender pay gap from 2027, and those with 100 to 149 employees from 2031. If a category of workers shows a gap of at least 5% that is not objectively justified and not fixed within six months, a joint pay assessment with worker representatives follows.
• The burden of proof shifts. In a pay discrimination case, the employer must prove there was no discrimination.

What you can do now

The directive is not yet Romanian law, but its principle is not new. Article 6 of the Labour Code already bans any discrimination based on sex in all elements of pay, for equal work or work of equal value. Article 157 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union says the same, and the Court of Justice ruled as far back as 1976, in the Defrenne case, that this right can be relied on directly in court, including against a private employer.

In practice: if you have signs that you are paid less for the same work because of your sex, you can complain to the National Council for Combating Discrimination or go to court. For unpaid wages, the deadline is 3 years. And if you work for a public institution, you can rely against the State on the clear and precise provisions of the directive, even untransposed, now that the June deadline has passed.

Why the delay matters

Every month without a law means candidates negotiating in the dark and employees without a simple way to check. The European Commission can open infringement proceedings against Member States that have not communicated transposition measures. Until then, the old rule applies: the right exists, but the burden of proof is on you.

We will follow the bill in the Chamber of Deputies and update this article.