Pay transparency rules in Romania

Romania has missed the EU's 7 June 2026 transposition deadline. The Ministry of Labour published a draft transposing law on 30 March 2026 and ran a short public consultation to 8 April 2026. A transposing bill was then tabled in the Senate on 17 June 2026 as a legislative proposal by a cross-party group of MPs and senators and put under the emergency procedure. The Legislative Council gave a negative opinion on 29 June 2026, and the bill is now with the Senate's committees, which returned favourable opinions on 2 September 2026 (public administration) and 15 September 2026 (budget and finance). Under the Constitution the Senate is deemed to have adopted it if it has not voted by 2 October 2026, after which the Chamber of Deputies decides. None of this makes the rules binding yet: the bill still has to pass both chambers of Parliament and be published in the Monitorul Oficial (the official gazette) before it takes effect. Until then, the duties below are proposals, not law, and the detail can still change. Employers in Romania should prepare but are not yet legally bound by these specific requirements.

Under the draft, before the interview an employer would have to tell each candidate the starting salary or pay range, either on the company website or in writing. Employers would no longer be allowed to ask candidates about their pay history. Existing staff would gain the right to ask for information on their own pay and on average pay levels broken down by sex for work of equal value; the employer would have to answer within 30 working days (tighter than the Directive's two months), with one extension allowed, and would have to remind all staff once a year, by the end of the first quarter, that this right exists. Job adverts and titles would need to be gender-neutral. Pay-secrecy clauses that stop staff disclosing their pay would be banned.

The draft follows the Directive's phased thresholds. Employers with 250 or more workers would report their gender pay gap by 7 June 2027 and then every year. Employers with 150 to 249 workers would report by 7 June 2027 and then every three years. Employers with 100 to 149 workers would report by 7 June 2031 and then every three years. Employers with fewer than 100 staff would report only voluntarily. If the figures show an average pay gap of at least 5% in any group of workers doing equal work, and the employer cannot justify it on objective gender-neutral grounds and does not fix it within six months, the employer must carry out a joint pay assessment with workers' representatives. The draft also requires unjustified gaps to be corrected within 90 working days, extendable by up to six months in justified cases.

The draft provides administrative fines of RON 10,000 to 20,000 (roughly EUR 2,000 to 4,000) for a first breach and RON 20,000 to 30,000 (roughly EUR 4,000 to 6,000) for repeated breaches. The revised draft recalculates these fines by reference to the national minimum gross salary, so the amounts would rise automatically as the minimum wage increases. As with everything else here, the penalty regime is not yet in force and the final figures may change before the law is adopted. The burden of proof in equal-pay disputes would shift to the employer, in line with the Directive.