{"id":39149,"date":"2026-04-30T07:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T05:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/?p=39149"},"modified":"2026-04-30T07:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T05:59:10","slug":"slovakia-as-a-european-leader-in-remuneration-transparency-what-the-new-law-on-equal-pay-brings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/2026\/04\/30\/slovakia-as-a-european-leader-in-remuneration-transparency-what-the-new-law-on-equal-pay-brings\/","title":{"rendered":"Slovakia as a European leader in pay transparency: What the new law on equal pay brings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Slovakia made European history on April 15th when the Slovak National Council adopted the Equal Pay Act. With this step, Slovakia became the first ever European Union member state to<!--more--> transposed into its national law in a timely and successful manner<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/eur-lex.europa.eu\/eli\/dir\/2023\/970\/oj\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">the European directive on pay transparency<\/span><\/a><\/strong>. The new legislation will enter into force exactly on the day the European deadline for transposition of the directive expires, i.e. June 7, 2026. This significant legislative step sends a clear signal to employers that the topic of fair wages is definitely moving from theory to practical application.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Time is running out: New responsibilities and tight deadlines<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For companies operating in Slovakia, this means the need to immediately prepare for new conditions. <strong>Employers must have wage structures in place that are fully compliant with the new regulations by July 31, 2026<\/strong>, which is only seven weeks after the law came into effect. The law sets very precise and differentiated deadlines for reporting wages by number of employees:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Companies with <strong>250 or more employees<\/strong> They must submit their first report by June 7, 2027, and will subsequently report data annually, always by April 15.<\/li>\n<li>Companies with <strong>150 to 249 employees<\/strong> They will also submit their first report by June 7, 2027, but their reporting obligation will subsequently be extended to every three years.<\/li>\n<li>Employers with <strong>100 to 149 employees<\/strong> have until 7 June 2031 (every three years thereafter) to submit their first report. An important specificity is that the initial reporting period for reports due in June 2027 will not cover the entire year, but <strong>will only cover the period from August 1 to December 31, 2026<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u201e&quot;Gold-plating&quot;: Where Slovakia goes beyond the European directive<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Slovak approach to the European directive brings with it several elements of so-called gold-plating, which multinational companies in particular should understand well. The most revolutionary change is <strong>extending protection and introducing equal pay rights for people of the same sex<\/strong>. In traditional systems, unquestionable differences could only arise when comparing the salary of men and women. However, under the new system, an employee can be compared with any other colleague performing work of equal value \u2013 Slovakia has de facto introduced legislation for overall fair remuneration, and not just gender pay.<\/p>\n<p>Another innovation is the criteria for evaluating the work itself. Instead of European terms such as \u201eskills\u201c and \u201eeffort\u201c, the Slovak law operates with the terms \u201ecomplexity\u201c and \u201eeffort\u201c. At the same time <strong>explicitly obliges employers to take into account soft skills, especially communication and social skills, when assessing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Slovakia has also tightened and firmly defined <strong>deadlines for responses and assessments<\/strong>, which the directive left more freedom. If an employee requests individual information about his salary, the company must respond within two months, and for additional questions it has only 30 days. If an unjustified difference in remuneration at the level of 5 % and more is found in the company, it is required <strong>joint assessment of remuneration<\/strong>, for the completion of which the legislator gave businesses a strict two-month deadline.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Employee rights and the threat of high sanctions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The new law also significantly strengthens the rights of job seekers. <strong>Each applicant must be informed well in advance of the starting salary or its range.<\/strong>, although this may not necessarily be published directly in the job advertisement. Current employees will gain (valid only from 2027) the right to written information on the average salary in their job category, broken down by gender. A major shift is <strong>prohibition of limiting discussion of remuneration<\/strong> \u2013 an employer can no longer prevent employees from disclosing information about their own salary for the purpose of claiming equal pay.<\/p>\n<p>The penalties for failure to comply with these rules can be much higher than the text of the law would suggest. While the basic fines for failure to report range from 4,000 to 8,000 euros, the amendment to the Labor Inspection Act will give the inspectorate broader powers and <strong>can impose sanctions on companies up to a respectable amount of 100,000 euros<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Recommendations for employers: Act today<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Slovak approach is in stark contrast to, for example, Estonia, which has already announced that it would rather accept EU sanctions than implement the directive in its current form. For international companies, this means that <strong>navigating European legislation will be extremely difficult<\/strong>, as, for example, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Latvia introduce completely different deadlines for similar obligations.<\/p>\n<p>Employers in Slovakia should therefore <strong>they should not underestimate the preparation and should immediately launch internal audits of pay gaps<\/strong>. It is precisely the timely review of wage structures and the ability to objectively defend the level of salary not only between men and women, but also between employees of the same sex, that will be the key to successfully managing the new rules, which will come into effect in the summer of 2026. <em><strong>JRi&amp;CO2AI<\/strong><\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Slovakia made European history on April 15th when the Slovak National Council adopted the Equal Pay Act. With this step, Slovakia became the first ever European Union member state to<\/p>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lca_esg_ghg_csddd_csrd_iso_flr"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39149"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39152,"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39149\/revisions\/39152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}