EU Pay Transparency Directive France: A Compliance Guide

At a Glance

• Status: bill deposited at the Senate, accelerated procedure. On 10 September 2026 the Council of Ministers adopted the transposition bill, presented by Jean-Pierre Farandou (Minister of Labour and Solidarity) and David Amiel (Minister for Public Accounts). It was deposited the same day at the Senate as PJL n° 944, under the accelerated procedure (procédure accélérée) and assigned to the Commission des affaires sociales (Sénat, dossier législatif n° 944). France missed the 7 June 2026 deadline.
• EU transposition deadline: 7 June 2026
• France's position: Gold-plating the directive heavily. Replacing the existing Index de l'égalité professionnelle (Index Pénicaud) with seven new indicators.
• Indicator mechanism: Indicators 1 to 6 are pre-calculated by the French State from Déclaration Sociale Nominative (DSN) payroll data. Indicator 7, the pay gap by job category, is calculated by the employer and phased in by size: within 1 year of promulgation for 150+ employees, 3 years for 100–149, and 6 years for 50–99.
• Reporting threshold: 50+ employees (lower than the EU Directive minimum of 100)
• Timeline: the existing Index Pénicaud is retained for the 2027 declaration, with a switch to the new 7-indicator framework targeted from 2028. A vote is aimed for before the end of 2026, though the Minister has acknowledged a final vote before the 2027 presidential election is not guaranteed.

Implementation Status: Where France Stands in 2026

France is among the most advanced EU member states on pay transparency and one of the most aggressive in transposing the directive. The country already operates the Index de l'égalité professionnelle (Index Pénicaud), introduced in 2018, which has required French employers with 50 or more employees to publish an annual professional equality index. The current government has chosen to retire that framework and replace it with a stricter regime aligned to the EU Pay Transparency Directive. Check out the PayAlign full guide to see all the information.

A preliminary draft bill (avant-projet de loi) was sent to trade unions and employer federations including MEDEF and CPME on 6 March 2026, ahead of a consultation on 19 March. On 5 June 2026 the government circulated a significantly advanced version, known as the Farandou bill, which was sent to the Conseil d'État for review. On 10 September 2026 the Council of Ministers formally adopted the bill and it was deposited the same day at the Senate as PJL n° 944, with the accelerated procedure engaged and the text assigned to the Commission des affaires sociales ahead of a floor debate. A vote is targeted before the end of 2026, with entry into force expected from 1 January 2028 and the existing Index Pénicaud retained for the intervening 2027 declaration, though this timetable depends on the parliamentary calendar and the implementing decrees still to come.

Because the 7 June 2026 deadline has passed, the directive now has direct effect: public-sector workers in particular can invoke its sufficiently precise and unconditional provisions directly against public employers, even while the French law moves through Parliament. Employers' federations (MEDEF and CPME) have pushed back hard on the bill's complexity and are lobbying for a moratorium of at least two years, while unions such as the CFDT have threatened litigation if the transposition is watered down.

The bill as deposited has three substantive strands:

1. Replacement of the Index Pénicaud with seven new indicators, six pre-calculated by the State via DSN data and the seventh (the category-level pay gap) calculated by the employer and phased in over 1 to 6 years by size.
2. Pre-employment transparency through salary range disclosure in job advertisements and a ban on pay history questions.
3. Strengthened enforcement through fixed administrative penalties and substantially enhanced fines.

For multinationals with French operations, the transposition is consequential because France's existing reporting framework was already among the strictest in the EU. The new regime extends rather than restarts that compliance discipline. French employers preparing for the broader pay transparency bill should expect material change to their reporting methodology, the role of the Social and Economic Committee (CSE) and the consequences of non-compliance.

Scope and Thresholds

The EU Pay Transparency Directive applies to all French employers across the public and private sector. The Directive's obligations such as pre-employment transparency, the right to information and gender-neutral pay setting apply to employers of all sizes. The gender pay gap reporting and equal value mapping apply to organisations with 50 employees or more.

Company size	Indicator 7 (category-level gap)	CSE (works council) role	Key obligations
50–99 employees	Within 6 years of promulgation; can be waived by company agreement	Informed of the data, methods and results	Exempt from mandatory joint pay assessments; corrective action via standard professional equality negotiations
100–149 employees	Within 3 years of promulgation	Consulted; opinion sent to the labour authorities	Full remediation if unjustified gaps exceed 5%; employees can request justifications
150–249 employees	Within 1 year of promulgation	Consulted	Full remediation and right to information
250+ employees	Within 1 year of promulgation	Consulted	Full remediation and right to information

France's 50-employee threshold is a departure from the EU Directive's minimum of 100. This is a deliberate continuation of the Index Pénicaud's 50-employee floor. It means an additional tier of French employers between 50 and 99 employees will fall within the new reporting regime even though the EU Directive itself would not capture them. Employers of 50 to 99 also get specific relief: they are exempt from mandatory joint pay assessments, and can negotiate an exemption from Indicator 7 through a company collective agreement.

Indicators 1 to 6 are pre-calculated by the State from DSN payroll data, so once the regime is live, most employers will not need to build their own calculation engine for the headline metrics. Indicator 7 remains the employer's own responsibility, since it depends on job architecture the State does not hold, and it phases in on the schedule above.

For multi-entity groups, the threshold applies at the level of the legal employer rather than the corporate group. French labour law treats the question of group-level employer obligations differently from many other EU jurisdictions and confirmation with French legal counsel is recommended before assuming any subsidiary is below the reporting threshold.

Key Metrics

Unlike the Irish aggregate reporting, the French bill mandates seven specific indicators:

1. The Gender Pay Gap (Mean & Median)
2. The Gender Bonus Gap
3. The Proportion of M/F receiving Variable Pay
4. Pay Quartile Distribution
5. The "Equal Value" Category Gap
6. The Rate of Individual Increases
7. Return from Maternity Leave Increases

France's transposition will replace the existing five Index Pénicaud indicators with these seven, aligned to the directive. The change is methodological as well as numerical. The Index Pénicaud measured an aggregate score across the workforce. The new indicators require reporting broken down by categories of workers performing equal work or work of equal value, in line with the EU Directive's structural approach. Indicators 1 to 6 are pre-calculated by the French State using DSN data; Indicator 7 is calculated by the employer, since it depends on the employer's own job categorisation.

Categorisation of workers performing work of equal value is one of the sections the bill substantially revised. Comparable work is now assessed through professional knowledge (diplomas and experience), skills acquired through experience, soft skills, working conditions, responsibilities and physical or nervous load (charge physique et nerveuse), a distinctly French addition to the assessment.

The process for setting these categories is layered. Industry branches (branches professionnelles) have 6 months from promulgation to open negotiations on job categorisation. Company-level agreements govern where they exist, taking precedence over the branch-level framework. Failing either, the employer sets the categories unilaterally after consulting the CSE, and that unilateral categorisation is valid for a maximum of 3 years before it must be revisited. Building a defensible job classification system is the single largest preparation task arriving with the new bill for French employers, particularly those whose Index Pénicaud reporting has historically relied on broad job family groupings. Check out the EIGE toolkit for more info.

Where France Goes Beyond the EU Directive Minimum

France's transposition is among the most ambitious in the EU. The bill goes beyond the directive minimum in several material respects:

Lower reporting threshold. The EU Directive's minimum threshold is 100 employees. France is mandating reporting for all employers with 50 or more employees, a continuation of the Index Pénicaud floor.

Mandatory salary ranges in job adverts. The EU Directive only requires disclosing a range before the first interview. The French bill goes further: the salary range must appear in the job advertisement itself. Where no public advert is used, for example in direct sourcing, the range must be given in writing before or during the recruitment process.

Fixed penalty for job advertisement breaches. A fixed administrative penalty of €450 per breach has been reported for any job advertisement that does not include a salary range. This is a per-advertisement penalty rather than a one-off fine and creates significant potential exposure for high-volume recruiters.

Up to 1% of payroll for systemic non-compliance. Administrative fines for failing to report or failing to implement a remediation plan can reportedly reach up to 1% of the total annual payroll, doubling to 2% for repeat offences. This is materially above what most other EU member states are introducing through transposition.

Expanded definition of work of equal value. The bill reframes comparable work around professional knowledge (diplomas and experience), skills acquired through experience, soft skills, working conditions, responsibilities and physical or nervous load. This raises the bar for defensible job classification and makes equal value mapping a more demanding analytical exercise.

A two-month right to information window. Employees can request their own pay level and the average pay levels, broken down by sex, for workers performing equal work or work of equal value. The employer must respond in writing within 2 months, using average pay data based on the previous calendar year (année civile antérieure).

Protection against abusive requests. To shield HR teams from overload, the bill states that employers are not required to respond to abusive, repetitive or systematic requests for pay clarification.

Individual confidentiality guardrails. For the category-level indicator, if disclosing the average pay by gender would reveal the exact salary of an identifiable coworker, that figure is withheld from the individual employee. It is instead sent exclusively to the CSE under strict confidentiality.

Strengthened CSE consultation. The Social and Economic Committee (CSE) does not just receive the report. The CSE must be consulted on the methodology itself. For employers with 100 or more employees, the CSE's formal opinion must be forwarded to the labour authorities (Inspection du Travail). This converts pay reporting from a unilateral employer act to a process subject to social dialogue at the methodological level.

The combined effect is that France is constructing one of the strictest pay transparency regimes in the EU. Employers operating in France should not assume that compliance with EU minimum standards will satisfy French requirements.

Penalties and Risks of Non-Compliance

The penalty regime under the bill as deposited is materially more aggressive than the equivalent provisions under the existing Index Pénicaud framework. The EU Directive (Article 23) requires member states to introduce penalties that are effective, proportionate and dissuasive and explicitly mandates that penalties must include fines. France's transposition takes this several steps further.

The penalty mechanisms reported in the bill as deposited are:

1. The €450 per breach job advertisement penalty. This is a fixed, per-instance penalty applied to non-compliant job advertisements. A French employer running 200 vacancies a year without compliant salary ranges could theoretically face €90,000 in penalties.
2. The 1% to 2% payroll fine for systemic non-compliance. This applies to failures to report or to implement a remediation plan. For a French employer with €100 million in annual payroll, this represents potential exposure of €1–2 million per breach.
3. A reinforced criminal regime for sex-based pay discrimination. Under the existing Article L.1146-1 of the Labour Code, this is already a misdemeanour (délit) carrying up to one year's imprisonment and a €3,750 fine for individual executives, rising fivefold to €18,750 for corporate entities and increasing for repeat infractions. The bill consolidates and toughens this regime, with reported figures of up to two years' imprisonment and a €7,500 fine where the same employer discriminates against multiple individuals, though the exact maximum thresholds remain subject to final legislative adjustment as the bill moves through Parliament.

Article 19 of the bill as deposited would also let public purchasers and concession-granting authorities exclude an employer from public contracts and concessions for one year where it has been sanctioned for failing to declare its indicators, failing to consult the CSE, or failing to correct an unjustified gap, on top of the underlying penalty.

Two further changes materially shift the litigation risk profile. The reversal of the burden of proof under Article 18 of the directive operates more aggressively in France than in many other jurisdictions because of how the Labour Court (Conseil de Prud'hommes) already handles discrimination claims. Where an employer fails to provide the requested pay transparency data, the court will reportedly presume that discrimination occurred, requiring the employer to prove its absence rather than the employee proving its presence. This is a significant escalation from the current French position.

The right to compensation under Articles 16 and 17 includes full recovery of back pay, lost opportunities and non-material damages with no statutory upper limit set by member states. Given France's existing case law on equal pay claims and the size of typical French settlements in employment litigation, the practical compensation exposure for non-compliant French employers is likely to be among the highest in the EU.

These figures are drawn from reporting on the bill as deposited at the Senate on 10 September 2026 and remain proposed statutory exposures under Parliamentary review, not final law, and could change before adoption.

How PayAlign Helps Irish Employers Prepare

PayAlign is a compliance platform built specifically for the Irish Gender Pay Gap Information Act and the EU Pay Transparency Directive. It takes Irish and EU payroll data through the full compliance workflow without the spreadsheet engineering most employers currently rely on.

The platform handles automated gender pay gap reporting calculations across all 14 mandatory Irish and the EU Directive metrics, category-of-workers reporting, joint pay assessment workflow including documentation, audit-ready data supporting the reversed burden of proof and submission-ready outputs for the centralised public portal.

If you are preparing for your next reporting cycle and the broader EU Directive transposition, book a demo to see how it works.

Frequently Asked Questions

When will France fully implement the EU Pay Transparency Directive?

France missed the 7 June 2026 deadline. On 10 September 2026 the Council of Ministers adopted the transposition bill and it was deposited the same day at the Senate as PJL n° 944, under the accelerated procedure. A vote is targeted before the end of 2026, though this is not guaranteed, with entry into force expected from 1 January 2028. The existing Index Pénicaud is retained for the 2027 declaration, before employers move to the new 7-indicator framework from 2028.

How does the new indicator calculation work, and does the employer have to do it?

Mostly no. Indicators 1 to 6 are pre-calculated by the French State using Déclaration Sociale Nominative (DSN) payroll data that employers already file each month, which removes most of the manual calculation burden employers currently carry under the Index Pénicaud. Indicator 7, the pay gap by job category, still requires the employer's own calculation, since it depends on job architecture the State does not hold, and it is phased in over 1 to 6 years depending on employer size.

What is happening to the Index de l'égalité professionnelle (Index Pénicaud)?

The Index Pénicaud is being retired and replaced with seven new indicators aligned to the EU Pay Transparency Directive, with the current Index retained for the 2027 declaration before the switch. French employers should expect a methodological shift from aggregate workforce scoring to category-of-workers reporting based on objective gender-neutral criteria. French organisations will be able to report through the French government portal.

What are the salary history rules in France?

The bill prohibits employers from asking job applicants about their pay history in current or previous employment. This applies across recruitment processes including job advertisements, application forms, screening interviews and recruiter scripts.

What role does the CSE (Social and Economic Committee) play in pay transparency reporting?

The CSE must be consulted on the methodology used to calculate the new indicators, not just receive the report. For employers with 100 or more employees, the CSE's formal opinion must be forwarded to the labour authorities (Inspection du Travail). Where answering an employee's information request would reveal an individual's salary, that disclosure is shielded and sent exclusively and confidentially to the CSE rather than to the employee directly. This makes pay reporting subject to social dialogue at the methodological level rather than a unilateral employer process.

What are the proposed penalties for non-compliance in France?

The bill as deposited reportedly proposes a fixed administrative penalty of €450 per breach for non-compliant job advertisements and administrative fines of up to 1% of total annual payroll (doubling to 2% for repeat offences) for failures to report or implement remediation plans. It also reinforces the criminal regime for sex-based pay discrimination, which under Article L.1146-1 already carries up to one year's imprisonment and a €3,750 fine (up to €18,750 for companies), with the toughened thresholds still being finalised in Parliament. These figures are materially above the EU Directive minimum and place France among the strictest jurisdictions for non-compliance exposure, though they remain subject to change until the bill is adopted.