The draft has been shared with the business community for comments and is now moving into discussions with trade unions. There is a reasonable prospect that Romania will meet the June 2026 transposition deadline, placing it ahead of several Member States still finalising their approach.

The EU Pay Transparency Directive, adopted in 2023, introduces new obligations across the EU including salary transparency in recruitment, employee rights to pay information, and mandatory gender pay gap reporting for larger employers.

Overview of Romania's approach

Romania appears to be taking a minimal transposition approach, implementing the Directive largely as drafted rather than introducing substantial additional national requirements. The draft legislation indicates a clear intention to avoid significant “gold plating,” an issue that has been a concern for employers across the EU.

Below, we summarise the key provisions and note the limited areas where Romania has chosen to diverge from the Directive. In most areas, Romania’s draft law closely mirrors the core obligations contained in the Directive.

Areas of alignment with the Directive

• Pay range disclosure to applicants
  The draft law transposes the Directive’s requirements to provide information on starting pay or pay range and such information must appear in the vacancy notice or be communicated in writing.
• Joint pay assessment triggers
  The draft mirrors the Directive in respect of the trigger for a joint pay assessment. A joint pay assessment is required where a gender pay gap of 5% or more is not remedied or justified by objective, gender-neutral factors. The draft law is more prescriptive than the Directive on the time period for employers to remedy the pay gap as it requires that such remediation be completed within six months (stakeholder proposals suggest extending this to twelve months) of the pay report submission. This is less flexible than the Directive which states that unjustified differences be remedied within a reasonable period of time.
• Reporting thresholds, frequency and deadlines
  The draft directly transposes the Directive's headcount thresholds and deadlines without gold-plating. This means that employers in Romania will generally follow the same reporting framework and implementation timetable set out in the Directive. Romania has added voluntary reporting for employers with fewer than 100 employees.
• Monitoring body
  ANES (the National Agency for Equal Opportunities between Women and Men) has been designated as the monitoring body responsible for overseeing compliance with Romania’s pay transparency framework.

Areas of divergence from the Directive

While Romania has largely followed the Directive, the draft law introduces several technical deviations that employers should be aware of.

• Definition of "work of equal value"
  The Directive provides for work to be determined as being of equal value using non-discriminatory, objective and gender-neutral criteria including skills, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. Romania’s draft uses a different definition which is more closely aligned with their national law and refers instead to "similar or equal professional knowledge and skills... equal or similar amount of intellectual and/or physical effort, responsibilities and working conditions". This difference in wording could create interpretation challenges when determining whether roles should be treated as work of equal value for pay transparency reporting.
• Pay structure requirement
  While the Directive requires employers to have pay structures ensuring equal pay, the draft law requires employers to organise a “remuneration system/department” at unit level. This is an additional obligation that could be seen as potential gold-plating which is facing pushback from stakeholders. If retained in the final legislation, this requirement could impose additional organisational obligations on employers beyond those envisaged in the Directive.
• Pay progression transparency
  The Directive requires transparency of pay setting and pay progression. Romania's draft includes the same obligation but adds “pay scales” where applicable. This addition exceeds the Directive's scope.
• Response deadlines
  The draft imposes tighter timelines than the Directive. Employers must respond to pay information requests within 30 working days, compared to two months under the Directive. For clarification requests on pay reports, the Directive requires a response within a “reasonable period” whereas the draft legislation requires employers to respond within 30-60 days (extendable by 30 days) and remedy any issues within 90 working days. These shorter timelines may require employers to establish internal processes for responding quickly to pay transparency requests from employees.
• Fines and penalties
  Romania has set fixed fines of lei 10,000-20,000 (approximately £1,700-£3,400), with repeated violations attracting fines of lei 20,000-30,000. These fixed amounts, rather than turnover or payroll-based penalties, may not prove sufficiently dissuasive for larger employers, as the Directive requires. As a result, the deterrent effect of these penalties may depend largely on enforcement practices by the monitoring authority.

Unresolved issues

Despite the relatively straightforward transposition, several areas of the draft legislation remain uncertain or open to interpretation.

Worker representative involvement

The draft defines “workers' representatives” as trade union or trade union representatives designated with responsibilities for equal opportunities between women and men. In Romania, trade unions are classified as either “representative” (where at least 35% of the company's headcount are members) or “non-representative”.

This distinction carries practical significance. The business community has sought clarification on whether non-representative trade unions are excluded from involvement in pay transparency matters. Without such clarification, employers could face a broad group of stakeholders to engage with.

The draft also provides little guidance on the precise role of worker representatives, essentially repeating the Directive's language regarding agreement on criteria for categorising workers and cooperation in joint pay assessments. Employers will need to form their own view on whether worker representative consent is required, and in what circumstances.

Clarification on this issue will be important for employers, particularly where multiple trade unions are present within the same organisation.

Terminology

The draft mirrors the Directive's own inconsistencies in terminology, including the interchangeable use of “worker” and “employee” and “gender” and “sex”. The business community has called for alignment with the Directive’s language to avoid unintended consequences. Aligning terminology with the Directive may help reduce legal uncertainty when interpreting the scope of employee rights under the legislation.

Next steps

Overall, Romania’s draft legislation suggests a predictable implementation of the EU Pay Transparency Directive, with relatively limited national deviations compared with some other Member States.

Romania's approach provides employers with a relatively predictable framework that aligns with the business community’s requests for clarity, consistency and alignment with the Directive. The absence of material gold-plating is notable. However, the draft does not resolve ambiguities inherent in the Directive itself, and employers operating in Romania will need to navigate these grey areas with potentially limited official guidance.

The draft law is now subject to discussions with trade unions and may be amended before finalisation. As more Member States publish draft implementing legislation, comparing national approaches will become increasingly important for employers preparing for EU-wide pay transparency compliance.