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 revised text was registered with the Romanian Senate on 17 June 2026 and put under the emergency legislative procedure, with the Legislative Council asked to report by 26 June 2026. 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.

When you hire in Romania through Teamed's Employer of Record (EOR) service, Teamed is the legal employer on paper. That means the statutory pay transparency duties would sit with Teamed once the Romanian law is in force: handling candidate pay disclosures, answering staff pay-information requests within the deadline, keeping records, and meeting any reporting obligations for the headcount Teamed legally employs. In practice these are shared: you set and approve the pay and the pay ranges, and Teamed makes sure the process and paperwork meet Romanian law. Reporting thresholds are based on the legal employer's workforce in Romania, so how staff are counted across an EOR arrangement is something to confirm with Teamed once the final law sets out the detail. Because the law is still a draft, the immediate action is preparation, not compliance: get pay ranges and job criteria documented now so you are ready when it commences.