The gender pay gap the EU rules will force into the open.
The EU Pay Transparency Directive makes employers report their gender pay gap and, where an unexplained gap of 5% or more shows up in a worker category, run a joint pay assessment to fix it. Here is how wide the gap is today, in every member state, using Eurostat's own figures for 2024.
Women's average gross hourly earnings were 11.1% lower than men's across the EU in 2024. That is the unadjusted gender pay gap: the raw difference in average hourly pay, before adjusting for hours, sector or seniority.
From 18.8% in Estonia to below zero in Luxembourg.
The unadjusted gap ranges enormously across the EU. In Estonia and Czechia it is above 18%. In Luxembourg it is slightly negative, meaning women's average gross hourly pay was a little higher than men's in 2024. A wide gap does not by itself prove discrimination, because it also reflects which jobs and hours women and men do. But it is the number the reporting rules put on the table, and it is where category-level gaps are most likely to surface.
Unadjusted gender pay gap, EU-27, 2024
Percentage difference between the average gross hourly earnings of men and of women. Higher means women are paid less. Hover or focus any bar for detail.
How to read this: each bar is one member state. Longer bar to the right means a wider gap in men's favour. The solid line marks the EU average (11.1%); the dashed line marks 5%.
Where the gap is widest.
The same 27 figures placed on a grid map. The widest gaps cluster in central Europe and the Baltics (Estonia, Czechia, Austria, Hungary), with Finland and Germany also high. The lowest sit in the south and east (Italy, Poland, Romania) plus Belgium and Luxembourg. Each square is one member state, coloured by its 2024 gap.
Unadjusted gender pay gap by member state, 2024
Grid map: each square is one country in its rough geographic position, shaded by its gap. Hover or focus a square for the figure.
How to read this: darker teal means a wider gap in men's favour. The hatched square (Luxembourg) is negative: women were paid slightly more on average.
Position is schematic, not to scale. Use the ranking above for exact order.
The countries with the widest gaps are not the ones writing the rules first.
Placing each state by its pay gap, and grouping by whether it has transposed the Directive, there is no neat pattern. Estonia has the widest gap in the EU (18.8%) and has only a draft law. Italy and Malta, with two of the smallest gaps, transposed on time. Slovakia transposed first of all, and its gap is 15.7%. Sweden, with a gap near the EU average, has said it does not intend to transpose at all.
Gender pay gap (2024) by transposition status
Each mark is one member state, placed left to right by its 2024 gap and grouped into the row for its transposition status. Hover or focus a mark for detail.
How to read this: rows are the legal status of each country's transposition (see shapes below), not a ranking. Position left to right is the pay gap. The dashed line is 5%; the solid line is the EU average (11.1%).
Three states, three mismatches
Estonia the widest gap in the EU at 18.8%, yet only a draft transposition law as at mid-2026.
Italy one of the smallest gaps at 5.3%, and among the first to transpose, in force from 7 June 2026.
Sweden a gap of 11.2%, near the EU average, and a government that has signalled it will not bring the Directive in.
The reporting timetable, by employer size.
The Directive phases reporting in by headcount. The largest employers start first and report every year; mid-sized employers start at the same date but only every three years; the 100 to 149 band does not file until 2031. The pre-employment rules and the right to pay information apply from national transposition whatever your size. This timetable is fixed in the Directive and does not depend on your country.
First gender pay gap report and cadence, by employer size band
Article 9. Markers are filing dates; the first report covers the previous calendar year. Hover or focus a marker for detail.
How to read this: each row is a size band. A filled square is a filing date; a run of squares to the right shows the reporting cadence after the first report.
Every member state: gap, status and deviation.
The complete table for all 27 states: the 2024 pay gap next to where each country stands on transposing the Directive. Sort by gap or search for a country. Transposition status is from law-firm trackers; nine states are shown as not confirmed by a current tracker in our sources and carry the pay gap only, not a guessed status.
| Member state | Pay gap 2024 | Transposition | Notable deviation or note | As at |
|---|
No member state matches that search.
The transposition split changes month to month. Do not act on a country row without confirming a current tracker on the date shown. Your report re-verifies your member state on the date of purchase.
How this was put together, and what it does not show.
What the pay gap figure is
The unadjusted gender pay gap is the difference between the average gross hourly earnings of male and female employees, as a percentage of men's earnings. It covers industry, construction and services (NACE Rev. 2 aggregate B to S, excluding public administration). It is unadjusted: it does not correct for differences in hours, occupation, sector or experience, so it is a measure of the overall earnings gap, not a like-for-like comparison of the same job.
The 5% trigger is a different measure
The Directive's joint pay assessment is triggered by a gap of 5% or more within a category of workers doing the same work or work of equal value, that the employer cannot justify on objective, gender-neutral grounds (Article 10). That is a like-for-like, category-level figure, not the economy-wide unadjusted gap charted here. The two are not the same statistic. We show the 5% line only as a reference point, because a wide unadjusted gap is where category-level gaps are most likely to appear once employers group and compare.
Transposition status
Country status is taken from published law-firm trackers dated within the current quarter (Littler, Mayer Brown, Morgan Lewis, Ius Laboris). It moves monthly. Where our sources do not confirm a state's status, it is marked not confirmed and shown with its pay gap only, rather than guessed. Every dated row carries its own as-at date.
Year and coverage
All 27 member states have a 2024 figure in the Eurostat release used, so no country is estimated or carried forward from an earlier year. Figures are rounded to one decimal place as published. A negative value (Luxembourg) means women's average gross hourly earnings were higher than men's.
Sources
- Eurostat, Gender pay gap in unadjusted form (sdg_05_20). Unit: percentage. NACE B to S excluding O. All 27 member states, 2024. Updated 26 February 2026, extracted 12 July 2026. ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/sdg_05_20
- Eurostat, Gender pay gap statistics (Statistics Explained). Confirms the EU-27 figure of 11.1% for 2024 and the Estonia (highest) and Luxembourg (lowest) extremes. ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained
- Directive (EU) 2023/970 on pay transparency. Reporting phase-in and cadence (Article 9), the 5% joint pay assessment trigger (Article 10), pre-employment rules (Article 5), transposition deadline of 7 June 2026 (Article 34). eur-lex.europa.eu, CELEX 32023L0970
- Law-firm transposition trackers. Littler, Mayer Brown, Morgan Lewis and Ius Laboris, per-country status as at June to July 2026. Used only for the status column; cross-checked against at least one tracker per row.
This page is educational analysis of public data, not legal advice, and national transposition is still moving. Figures decay: the pay gap is refreshed annually by Eurostat, and the country status is re-verified per the schedule in each report.
See what the rules mean for your company.
The chart shows the gap across the EU. The report shows your obligations: enter one member state and your headcount, and get your in-scope verdict, first reporting deadline and cadence, the disclosure duties, and your country's dated transposition status.
Free scope check first. The personalised country report is €79.