{"id":41478,"date":"2026-03-10T13:49:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T13:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mgglegal.com\/?p=41478"},"modified":"2026-03-10T13:49:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T13:49:11","slug":"france-pay-transparency-time-for-an-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mgglegal.com\/en\/france-pay-transparency-time-for-an-update\/","title":{"rendered":"France &amp; Pay Transparency: Time for an update"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Earlier this year, ELLINT Next published its <strong>Pay Transparency Handbook 2025<\/strong>, covering how 13 European jurisdictions are approaching the transposition of EU Directive 2023\/970 regarding pay transparency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you missed it, you can find it <a href=\"https:\/\/ellint.net\/posts\/41-pay-transparency-preparing-for-the-eu-directive-2023970\">here<\/a> &#8211; and if you did read it, good news: it&#8217;s already time for an update.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>A quick recap<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The EU Pay Transparency Directive must be transposed by <strong>6 June 2026<\/strong>. Its goal: close the gender pay gap through greater transparency in hiring, pay reporting, and employee rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>France was already ahead with its existing \u201c<em>Index de l&#8217;\u00e9galit\u00e9 professionnelle\u201d<\/em> &#8211; but the Directive has raised the bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What&#8217;s new<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On 6 March 2026, the French government shared a first draft of the bill with the unions in view of their consultation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First news: France will miss the June 2026 deadline, with most measures not taking effect before <strong>mid-2027<\/strong>. It won&#8217;t be alone in that club as many member states have made it an aspirational exercise not to transpose EU directives on time. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As we had anticipated in our earlier handbook, the draft of the bill is not very original and covers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A new pay reporting index with 7 indicators (up from 6), including a new breakdown of pay gaps by category of employees doing equivalent work (applicable to companies with 50+ employees),<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Differentiated obligations depending on company size when a pay gap is identified:<ul><li>For companies with 50 to 99 employees, things are kept relatively light: if a gap above the 5% threshold is found, the employer must address it through professional equality negotiations or produce an action plan.<\/li><\/ul>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>For companies with 100+ employees, the CSE or trade union delegates can request detailed explanations on the indicators. If a gap above 5% cannot be objectively justified, the employer has six months to correct it by collective agreement or unilateral decision. If the gap is still unjustified after those six months, a formal joint assessment with employee representatives kicks in.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A redefined notion of &#8220;<em>work of equal value<\/em>&#8221; that now explicitly incorporates non-technical skills and working conditions, which is a meaningful shift. The categorization of employees performing work of equal value must be established by collective agreement, with a unilateral employer decision as a last resort.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A right for employees to request their own pay level and gender-based averages for comparable roles, with a two-month response deadline for employers (who must also remind employees of this right every year),<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>An obligation to include a salary range in job postings \u2013 in practice vague formulas like &#8220;salary based on profile&#8221; will be banned, and asking candidates about their pay history will be explicitly prohibited,<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A reinforced burden of proof: if an employer hasn&#8217;t met its transparency obligations, the full burden of proving the absence of discrimination falls on them,<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Penalties of up to 1% of total payroll for reporting breaches, and up to \u20ac450 for individual information failures (with doubling mechanisms for repeat offenders).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What does this mean practically<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While the delay may feel like good news, don&#8217;t be too relaxed about it. Restructuring pay categories, identifying and documenting gaps, updating job offer templates and HR processes take more time than expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Branch-level collective bargaining on pay categorization should ideally be concluded by end of 2026, so that clock is already ticking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The steps outlined in our Handbook are a good place to start: audit your pay structures, review job classifications, train your HR teams, and get the job offer templates in order. Winter is coming!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this year, ELLINT Next published its Pay Transparency Handbook 2025, covering how 13 European jurisdictions are approaching the transposition of EU Directive 2023\/970 regarding pay transparency. If you missed it, you can find it here &#8211; and if you did read it, good news: it&#8217;s already time for an update. A quick recap The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":41479,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[152],"class_list":["post-41478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actualites","tag-mgg-academy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mgglegal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mgglegal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mgglegal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mgglegal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mgglegal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mgglegal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41482,"href":"https:\/\/www.mgglegal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41478\/revisions\/41482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mgglegal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mgglegal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mgglegal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mgglegal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}