Directive 2023/970/EU · Compliance Matrix

The EU Pay Transparency Directive, Article by Article.

Directive 2023/970/EU runs to 37 Articles across four chapters. This page walks every Article that creates an operational obligation on employers, and sets out exactly what Vareqa delivers, what it enables, and where an employer still needs to act outside the platform. Built for General Counsel review and mid-market procurement due diligence.

Directive
2023/970
Adopted 10 May 2023
Transposition deadline
7 Jun 2026
Passed, transposition ongoing
First reporting cycle
7 Jun 2027
Employers of 150+
Burden of proof
Reversed
For transparency breaches

How to read this matrix

Three coverage categories. No ambiguity.

Not every Article of the Directive is an operational obligation Vareqa can or should fulfil. Some describe national enforcement procedures. Some govern the legal process. Some establish definitions rather than duties. This matrix classifies every employer-facing obligation into one of three categories and tells you plainly which one applies.

Vareqa fulfils
Operational obligations Vareqa directly performs.

The platform produces the regulator-ready output. Where this badge appears, the employer's primary task is to review, approve, and publish. Articles 4, 5, 7 and 9.

Vareqa enables
Vareqa provides the evidence, the employer exercises the defence.

The platform generates the content, the evidence, and the audit trail; the employer publishes, communicates, or litigates with it. Articles 6, 8, 10, 16, 18, 19 and 20.

Out of scope
Outside Vareqa's software boundary.

The obligation sits with the Member State, the employer's legal counsel, or internal HR policy, not with a software platform. Articles 1 to 3 (scope and definitions), 11 to 15 and 17 (Member State measures and legal procedure), 21 to 26 (costs, penalties and related provisions), and 27 to 37 (horizontal and closing provisions). Listed for completeness.

A note on precision

The Directive is most often cited in marketing with single-number Article references ("Article 4", "Article 9"). The Directive text itself is sub-structured: Article 4 has four paragraphs, Article 9 has ten. Where a specific paragraph creates the concrete obligation, we cite it directly (for example, Article 4(4) for the evaluation criteria, Article 9(1)(a) to (g) for the seven reporting indicators). This level of precision is what a General Counsel expects in a compliance review and what Vareqa's methodology is engineered to deliver against.

Chapter I
General Provisions
Scope, definitions, and the foundational obligation to maintain pay structures that permit equal-pay comparison.
Article 1 sets the Directive's objective, to ensure application of the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value between men and women, by establishing minimum requirements for pay transparency and enforcement. It does not impose any direct operational requirement on employers.
Article 2 defines the personal scope: the Directive applies to all undertakings in the public and private sector, and to all workers who have an employment contract or employment relationship as defined by law, collective agreement, or practice in each Member State, with reference to the case-law of the Court of Justice. This is a definitional provision.
Article 3 provides the definitions that govern interpretation throughout the Directive. Key definitions include: "pay" (ordinary basic wage plus any complementary or variable components); "pay level" (gross annual remuneration and the corresponding gross hourly remuneration); "work of equal value" (work that is of equal value on the basis of objective, gender-neutral criteria); and "category of workers" (workers performing the same work or work of equal value grouped on the basis of those criteria). These definitions are definitional, not operational employer obligations.
Article 4(4) requires Member States to ensure employers have available pay determination and pay setting systems that are based on objective, gender-neutral criteria. The Vareqa Role Evaluation Framework™ directly satisfies this obligation: it evaluates every role against eight transparent, gender-neutral compensable factors (Organisational Impact, Knowledge Depth, Problem Complexity, Decision Autonomy, People Leadership, Influence & Communication, Innovation Requirement, Working Environment). The criteria are published, auditable, and shareable with employees and regulators. Vareqa generates the written evidence of methodology that Article 4 requires an employer to be able to produce.
Chapter II · Articles 5 to 13
Pay Transparency
The operational core of the Directive. Articles 5 to 10 create concrete employer obligations before hiring, during employment, at annual reporting, and at the joint assessment trigger. Articles 11 to 13, covering Member State support, data protection, and social dialogue, appear in the completeness section below.
Article 5 requires employers to provide job applicants with information on the initial pay level or pay range for the position, in the published vacancy notice or otherwise before the interview. The information must be provided in writing. Employers are prohibited from asking candidates about their current or previous pay. Vareqa's Salary Range Publisher module generates the defensible pay range drawn directly from the grade structure, ready to include in job advertisements and applicant communications.
Article 6 requires employers to make accessible to their workers the criteria used for determining pay, pay levels, and pay progression. These criteria must be objective and gender-neutral. Vareqa enables this obligation: the REF™ methodology documentation, factor definitions, point values, and grade thresholds are all transparently documented and publishable. The employer must decide how and where to communicate them internally. Vareqa generates the content; the employer publishes it.
Article 7 grants every worker the right to request information on their individual pay level and on the average pay levels, broken down by sex, of workers doing the same work or work of equal value. The employer must respond in writing within two months of the request. Workers must be informed of this right at least annually. Vareqa's Employee Right-to-Information module generates the plain-language response in the employee's own language, drawn directly from the evaluation and pay-band data. The two-month statutory window is tracked in the platform.
Article 8 requires that all information shared under Articles 5, 6, and 7 must be made accessible to workers who have disabilities, in a format suitable to their particular needs, upon request. Vareqa outputs are structured data and plain-language text that can be delivered in accessible formats. The employer is responsible for ensuring the delivery channel meets accessibility standards (e.g. WCAG 2.1), this is a publishing decision, not a platform limitation.
Article 9(1)(a) to (g) specifies seven mandatory pay-gap indicators: (a) the gender pay gap; (b) the gender pay gap in complementary or variable components; (c) the median gender pay gap; (d) the median gender pay gap in complementary or variable components; (e) the proportion of female and male workers receiving complementary or variable components; (f) the proportion of female and male workers in each quartile pay band; and (g) the gender pay gap between workers by categories of workers broken down by ordinary basic wage and complementary or variable components. Vareqa's Pay Gap Calculator and Gender Pay Gap Reporter module computes and packages all seven indicators for submission to the relevant Member State body.
Article 10 requires employers who have reported a pay difference of at least 5% in any category of workers that is not justified by objective, gender-neutral criteria, and who have not remedied that difference within six months of the reporting date, to carry out a joint pay assessment in cooperation with workers' representatives. Vareqa provides the category analysis, the gender-neutral justification record, and the reporting output that a joint pay assessment draws on, all generated from the same evaluation data. A dedicated Joint Pay Assessment workflow is in development; until it ships, the platform supplies the evidence base and the employer conducts the assessment itself in cooperation with workers' representatives.
Reporting thresholds and first-cycle dates

Article 9 reporting applies to employers of 100 or more workers, phased by size. These dates are set by the Directive and are not Member State discretion, although some Member States may accelerate. This is the schedule your compliance calendar must reflect.

Employer sizeFirst reporting cycleFrequency
250+ workersArticle 9(2)By 7 June 2027, reporting on calendar year 2026.Annual thereafter.
150 to 249 workersArticle 9(3)By 7 June 2027, reporting on calendar year 2026.Every three years.
100 to 149 workersArticle 9(4)By 7 June 2031, reporting on calendar year 2030.Every three years.
Under 100 workersArticle 9(5)Voluntary. Member States may legislate.Not mandated at Directive level.
Chapter III · Articles 14 to 26
Remedies and Enforcement
Where the teeth of the Directive live. Burden of proof, compensation, penalties, and retaliation protection. These Articles do not create platform-scale obligations, but Vareqa's evidence is what anchors the employer's defence.
Article 16 ensures that workers who have suffered pay discrimination can recover full compensation or reparation for the damage sustained, including full recovery of back pay and related bonuses or payments in kind, compensation for lost opportunities, non-material damage, and interest on arrears. No upper limit may be fixed in advance. Vareqa enables this Article by providing the pay-band and evaluation evidence that allows the employer, and where required the court, to reconstruct what the correct pay level should have been.
Article 18 reverses the burden of proof in pay discrimination proceedings where the employer has failed to comply with any of the transparency obligations (Articles 5, 6, 7, 9, or 10). In those circumstances, the employer must demonstrate that no pay discrimination has occurred. An employer that meets its Article 4, 5, 7 and 9 obligations through Vareqa enters any proceeding with the burden on the correct side. The Vareqa audit trail, every evaluation, every pay band, every right-to-information response, is the evidentiary record that supports the defence. Legal counsel must conduct the actual proceedings.
Article 19 governs how equal work or work of equal value is established in proceedings. The assessment is not restricted to workers of the same employer where pay conditions can be attributed to a single source, and where no real comparator exists, a claimant may rely on a hypothetical comparator or other evidence, including statistics or the employer's own job classification and evaluation arrangements. A documented, gender-neutral evaluation framework is precisely the evidence a court will examine. Vareqa's published methodology and per-role derivations give the employer that evidence in a form built to be examined.
Article 20 requires Member States to ensure that national courts can order an employer to disclose relevant evidence in its control in equal pay proceedings, including confidential information, subject to effective protective measures. An employer running Vareqa answers a disclosure order from a structured, versioned record rather than reconstructing years of pay decisions from scattered files. The evidence exists, is complete, and carries its own audit trail. Counsel manages the disclosure itself.
Article 23 requires Member States to lay down effective, proportionate, and dissuasive penalties, including fines, for infringements of national provisions adopted pursuant to the Directive, taking into account aggravating factors such as repetition. The specific penalty regime is a Member State legislative matter; related consequences in public procurement sit under Article 24. Compliance with Articles 4 to 10 is the mechanism by which an employer avoids exposure to penalties.
Article 25 requires Member States to prohibit any adverse treatment of workers, workers' representatives, or persons who assist in a complaint as a consequence of exercising or attempting to exercise their rights under the Directive. This is an HR policy and employment law obligation; it does not fall within the operational scope of a pay architecture platform.

Completeness

What Vareqa does not claim to cover

The Directive has 37 Articles. The matrix above covers the Articles that create operational obligations on employers and where Vareqa is relevant. The following Articles sit outside Vareqa's software boundary, by design, and are flagged here so that a General Counsel reviewing this matrix can confirm the scope is honest.

Article 11 requires Member States to provide support, in the form of technical assistance and training, to employers with fewer than 250 workers and to the workers' representatives concerned, to facilitate their compliance with the obligations laid down in the Directive. This is a Member State obligation and creates no operational duty on employers.
Article 12 requires that any personal data processed for the purposes of implementing Articles 7, 9, and 10 are processed in accordance with GDPR (Regulation 2016/679) and must not be used for any purpose other than applying the principle of equal pay. This is a GDPR compliance and data governance obligation for the employer's legal and DPO function, not a feature of a job evaluation and pay architecture platform.
Article 13 requires Member States, without prejudice to the autonomy of the social partners and in accordance with national law and practice, to take adequate measures to ensure their effective involvement in implementing the Directive, including discussion of the rights and obligations under it. This creates no direct employer obligation; the obligation falls on Member States.
Article 14 obliges Member States to ensure that judicial procedures are available for the enforcement of rights and obligations relating to equal pay, after possible recourse to conciliation. Article 15 allows associations, organisations, equality bodies, and workers' representatives to engage in proceedings on behalf of or in support of a worker, with that worker's approval. Article 17 provides for other remedies, including injunctions requiring an infringement to cease and orders to comply. None of these creates a direct operational obligation on employers that a software platform could address; Vareqa's audit trail supports the evidentiary posture within them.
Article 21 requires Member States to lay down limitation periods of at least three years for bringing equal pay claims, with time not beginning to run before the claimant is aware, or can reasonably be expected to be aware, of the infringement. Article 22 provides that national courts may, in accordance with national law, dispense an unsuccessful claimant from paying the costs of proceedings where the claim was brought on reasonable grounds. Both are procedural rules addressed to Member States and national courts.
Article 24 requires Member States to take measures ensuring that economic operators performing public contracts and concessions comply with the equal pay obligations, and permits exclusion measures against operators found in breach. Article 26 governs the relationship between the Directive and Directive 2006/54/EC. Both are framework provisions addressed to Member States.
Articles 27 to 37 are the horizontal and closing provisions of the Directive: Article 27 (level of protection, Member States may adopt more favourable provisions and must not regress); Article 28 (equality bodies); Article 29 (monitoring and awareness-raising); Article 30 (collective bargaining and action); Article 31 (statistics); Article 32 (dissemination of information); Article 33 (implementation); Article 34 (transposition, the 7 June 2026 deadline, which has now passed with most Member States still completing their national laws); Article 35 (reporting and review); Article 36 (entry into force); Article 37 (addressees). These create obligations for Member States, not operational obligations for employers.

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