Three years after the EU adopted the EU Pay Transparency Directive, salary transparency across Europe remains inconsistent, and in many countries, it remains largely absent from job adverts.
New research from Indeed Hiring Lab, shows major differences across Europe in the percentage of job adverts displaying salary information, despite the June 2026 implementation deadline fast approaching.
- Netherlands 48%
- France 43%
- Ireland 39%
- Italy 36%
- Spain 17%
- Germany 12%
What the EU law actually changes
The new EU rules are designed to tackle persistent gender pay gaps and improve fairness in hiring. Under the directive, employers across EU member states will be required to:
- Provide salary information to candidates before interview
- Ban questions about salary history
- Give employees access to pay benchmarking information
- Introduce stricter gender pay gap reporting obligations
- Justify pay differences for equal work
However, the directive does not explicitly require salary ranges to appear in the job advert itself, therefore employers can technically comply by disclosing pay later in the hiring process.
That distinction matters enormously for recruiters and candidates alike. Salary visibility at advert stage reduces wasted applications, shortens hiring cycles, and improves candidate quality. Without it, many organisations may continue to rely on vague “competitive salary” messaging.
At present, Ireland appears to be the only major European market preparing to make salary disclosure in job adverts mandatory as standard.
Candidates overwhelmingly want salary transparency
The demand from jobseekers is already there. An Indeed survey of more than 6,000 workers across six European countries found:
- 61-82% of candidates are more likely to apply when salary is listed
- 64-83% believe salary ranges should be standard in job adverts
- Women consistently showed stronger support for pay transparency than men
The research also found that lower-paid and hourly-paid roles tend to be far more transparent. By contrast, higher-paid professional and corporate roles continue to lag behind, particularly in finance, technology, and engineering sectors.
The bigger challenge may now be operational. Many employers still lack consistent pay frameworks internally, making transparent ranges difficult to publish confidently. With implementation deadlines looming and candidate expectations rising, salary transparency is rapidly shifting from a “nice to have” to a competitive necessity, even if full transparency across Europe still looks some way off.
Read more on upcoming legislation changes within the UK.
