---
title: "The EU Pay Transparency Directive (video series)"
description: "A five-part series on the EU Pay Transparency Directive (Directive 2023/970): why it reaches companies far outside Europe, the reporting thresholds and deadlines, the new rights employees and candidates have, the hard problem of work of equal value, and a practical six-step plan to get ready now. Hosted by Deepti Gupta, co-founder of Sageo. General information, not legal advice."
url: "https://sageo.ai/videos/eu-pay-transparency"
updated: "2026-10-10T00:00:00.000Z"
source: "Sageo (sageo.ai)"
---


# The EU Pay Transparency Directive

_A five-part series on the EU Pay Transparency Directive (Directive 2023/970): why it reaches companies far outside Europe, the reporting thresholds and deadlines, the new rights employees and candidates have, the hard problem of work of equal value, and a practical six-step plan to get ready now. Hosted by Deepti Gupta, co-founder of Sageo. General information, not legal advice._

Full playlist: [The EU Pay Transparency Directive on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRuEX11USKw4)

## Part 1: The EU Pay Transparency Law Applies Even If You're Not in Europe

The EU Pay Transparency Directive (Directive 2023/970) makes equal pay enforceable through transparency: how you set pay, how people progress, and how you hire all have to be objective and gender-neutral, and you have to be able to show your working. What catches founders out is the trigger. It is not where your company is headquartered, it is how many people you employ in each EU country, so a sales team in Germany or engineers in Poland pull you into that country's rules.

Watch: [The EU Pay Transparency Law Applies Even If You're Not in Europe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9ZaG6N-Hzo)

## Part 2: EU Pay Gap Reporting: The Dates and Thresholds That Matter

Who reports, and how often, depends on headcount in each country: 250 or more report every year from 7 June 2027, 150 to 249 every three years from the same date, and 100 to 149 from 2031. The catch most people miss is that the first report covers the previous calendar year, so 2026 pay data is what gets reported. An unexplained gap of 5 percent or more in any equal-work group that is not fixed within six months triggers a joint pay assessment.

Watch: [EU Pay Gap Reporting: The Dates and Thresholds That Matter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p33_GVq1KBs)

## Part 3: What Employees and Candidates Can Now Ask About Pay in the EU

Workers gain a right to information: their own pay and the average pay, by sex, for people doing the same or equal-value work, answered within two months, with pay secrecy clauses banned. Hiring changes too: candidates get a pay range before the interview, salary-history questions are out, and job ads must be gender-neutral. The real shift is the reversed burden of proof. Once a worker makes a credible claim, you have to show the decision was fair, which means keeping records of why each decision was made.

Watch: [What Employees and Candidates Can Now Ask About Pay in the EU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGMX4_uP_vk)

## Part 4: Work of Equal Value: The Hardest Part of EU Pay Transparency

Work of equal value means comparing jobs that look different on paper using objective, gender-neutral criteria: skills, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. If two roles score similarly and the pay split falls along gender lines, you need a reason that is not gender. Most companies cannot do this yet, not because they are unfair, but because they have never written down what a role requires. A raw pay gap is not automatically discrimination; what matters is what is left once objective factors are accounted for, and you can only explain that with a documented job architecture.

Watch: [Work of Equal Value: The Hardest Part of EU Pay Transparency](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhvzXmC0uUI)

## Part 5: EU Pay Transparency: 6 Steps to Get Ready Now

You do not need to wait for the final national law to begin. Six steps: make it a board-level issue, build a cross-functional team, map headcount by EU country, build a documented gender-neutral job architecture, run a pay equity audit under legal privilege, and clean up hiring and progression. Sageo works on the framework and evidence layer, competency frameworks, documented pay and progression criteria, and calibrated decisions with an audit trail, while you bring in partners for the statistical gap calculations, total reward analysis, payroll reporting, and country-level legal advice.

Watch: [EU Pay Transparency: 6 Steps to Get Ready Now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXrHMmR1fmU)