The clock is ticking: the EU Pay Transparency Directive will enter into force in the summer of 2026

By: Trademagazin Date: 2025. 09. 05. 09:20

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The Hungarian labor market will undergo a radical transformation from next summer: the EU wage transparency directive will come into force, requiring the display of salary ranges in job advertisements, prohibiting salary secrecy, and requiring regular reporting on gender pay gaps. But what effect could it have if salaries within an organization become public? According to an expert from Humán Centrum Munkaerő-kölköksönző és törvénytő Kft., the new regulation could fundamentally transform workplace relations and companies should already be prepared for the challenges arising from salary arrangements.

Salary arrangements will be mandatory, skeletons may fall out of the closet

EU regulations are not without precedent: several countries have been successful in making salaries more transparent. In Slovakia, for example, since 2018, it has been mandatory to display salary ranges in job advertisements, which, according to a survey, increased salaries by an average of 3 percent within a year. Similar regulations have been introduced in the public sector in Canada, and according to research, the gender pay gap among university lecturers has decreased by 30–40 percent. In the United Kingdom, companies with more than 250 employees have been required to publish gender-disaggregated wage data since 2017: the wage gap has decreased from 16.8 percent to 13.3 percent in six years.

“The basic condition for introducing wage transparency is internal wage settlement,” emphasizes Dénes Rajmund, CEO of Humán Centrum Munkaerő-kölköksönző és törvénytő Kft. “This includes rethinking job levels, responsibilities and the benefit system, as well as the weighting and evaluation of competencies.” The expert also warns that, in terms of fair remuneration, it is important to manage complex positions in which a colleague performs multiple tasks at the same time. Their remuneration should be determined proportionally, based on the time spent on the tasks and responsibility. “During such a review, quite a few skeletons may fall out of the closet. It may happen that there are significant differences in salaries between people working in similar positions, which can cause quite a few delicate and tense situations,”

– adds the managing director.