EU Pay Transparency Directive: what recruitment firms must do before 7 June 2026

The 90-second version

On 7 June 2026, EU Directive 2023/970 on pay transparency must be transposed into national law across all 27 Member States. The directive bans salary-history questions, requires pay information before the first interview, and lays the groundwork for gender-pay-gap reporting that scales by employer size — starting with 150+ staff in 2027 and tightening to 100+ staff by 2031 (Council of the EU).

If you run a recruitment or staffing agency in the EU — or place candidates into EU employers from Switzerland — you are inside the perimeter. The directive treats agencies as acting on behalf of the employer, which means several of its obligations apply to your intake calls and your job ads, regardless of how small your team is.

Why this is a recruitment-agency problem, not just an HR problem

The salary-history ban applies to anyone acting on the employer's behalf

Article 5(2) of the directive prohibits any employer — and any agent acting for them — from asking candidates about their current or previous salary (Pinsent Masons EU country guide). The salary-history question — long a staple of agency intake calls across DACH and ex-Yu — becomes legally radioactive across the EU from 7 June.

Boutique firms often assume this is a question for the in-house TA team. It isn't. If your consultant asks a candidate "what are you earning now?" on the intake call, your agency is the entity breaking the rule.

Agency workers count in the end-client's pay-gap reporting

This is the part most agencies missed in early drafts and is now explicit in implementation guidance: placed agency workers count toward the end-client's headcount and pay-gap calculations (Debevoise & Plimpton briefing). Big clients are starting to push reporting obligations down the supply chain. Expect "you must provide gender-pay-gap data for placements made under our framework agreement" to appear in your 2026 contract renewals.

What changes in your day-to-day on 7 June

Job ads — "competitive" is dead

Pay information must reach the candidate in the job ad, or at the latest before the first interview — and it must be a specific range, not weasel words (Figures.hr practical guide). "Competitive salary," "negotiable," and "depending on experience" all become non-compliant.

The simplest fix: every new job post on your site, on LinkedIn, and on every board you syndicate to needs a min–max range with currency, by 7 June. If you maintain the postings, you maintain the obligation.

Intake calls — drop the salary-history question

Update your intake script and any intake forms. Replace "what's your current package?" with "what range are you targeting for your next role?" — which is permitted, because it's about the candidate's expectation, not their history. Train every recruiter; the question is reflexive after twenty years of using it.

Record-keeping — start logging what you disclosed, when

If a candidate later claims they were offered less than the disclosed band, you need to prove what range you communicated, on what date, to whom. Most boutique agencies do not have this audit trail today. A SharePoint list or a simple log per role is enough — but it must exist by 7 June, not after the first complaint.

Country-by-country: where you actually need to comply by June

Germany. Germany already has the Entgelttransparenzgesetz (since 2017, threshold 200 employees). The directive does not replace it — it lowers the threshold to 100 employees and bolts on the salary-range disclosure and the salary-history ban (Ogletree Deakins on Germany).

Austria. Austria has long required salary indication in job ads (since 2011 under the Equal Treatment Act). The directive adds the salary-history ban and modernises reporting thresholds (Eversheds Sutherland on Austria).

Switzerland. Switzerland is not bound by the directive — but the revised Gleichstellungsgesetz (GlG) has required equal-pay analyses for 100+ employers since 2020, and a 2025 federal assessment found almost half of organisations did not comply (Mercer Switzerland). Swiss agencies placing into EU employers, however, must follow the directive's rules through their EU clients. The Swiss carve-out is partial, not total.

Croatia & Slovenia. Croatia had no published draft as of 30 April 2026; expect transposition through amendments to the Labour Act and the Anti-Discrimination Act (Wolf Theiss). Slovenia partially pre-empted via amendments to ZDR-1 in August 2025.

Late-mover risk. Two of the EU's most-watched jurisdictions — Ireland and the Netherlands — have officially confirmed they will miss the deadline (Irish Times). Missed transposition does not delay the candidate's directly invocable rights against the state — but private-sector enforcement waits on national law. Plan around your actual jurisdiction.

The five mistakes I'm seeing boutique agencies make

1. Treating it as the client's problem. The intake and ad-disclosure rules apply to you, the agency, regardless of who actually employs the placed candidate.
2. "We're under 100 staff, so we're exempt." Only the reporting requirement scales with size. Job-ad and intake-script obligations are size-blind.
3. Updating the careers site, forgetting the job boards. A compliant ad on your site and a non-compliant copy on Indeed is still a non-compliant ad. Audit every channel you syndicate to.
4. No audit trail of what was disclosed. If a candidate later disputes the salary range they were shown, you need a timestamped record — list, log, or email thread.
5. Assuming Swiss clients are exempt. If the Swiss client is hiring into the EU, or has EU-based subsidiaries that touch the role, the directive's rules reach the placement.

The honest bottom line

Most boutique agencies in DACH and ex-Yu will miss 7 June — not by intent, but because the directive lands in the middle of a busy quarter and is widely misread as a "big company problem." The agencies that do get this right will not earn a medal for it. They will avoid the first wave of complaints, the first reputational fights with sophisticated candidates who know their rights, and the awkward conversation when a client asks for the pay-gap data on placements made last quarter.

The 14-day window is real. So is the work. None of it is technically complex — most of it is process discipline you'd want anyway. The question is whether you do it before 7 June, or after the first candidate cites Article 5 in an email.