Spain and Portugal: The New Written Rules for Your Pay Gap
Spain’s draft pay transparency rules require a written justification wherever mean or median pay for one sex exceeds the other by 25%. Portugal’s draft gives employers 45 days to submit a joint pay assessment once a labour inspector decides a 5% gap in a worker category is unexplained. Both drafts…
On 25 August, Daniella McGuigan, a partner at Ogletree Deakins in London, published an update tracking where Spain and Portugal have got to on the EU Pay Transparency Directive, with Mai Barry contributing. The deadline for transposing Directive (EU) 2023/970 was 7 June 2026. Roughly 22 of 27 member states missed it, the Commission’s July infringement package contained no pay transparency action at all, and the sector has been writing that up since. All true. All finished by about the second week of June. What landed in August is the part with teeth. Spain published a draft Royal Decree on 4 August amending Real Decreto 902/2020, consultation closing on the 24th. Portugal published its own within a day, a partial transposition amending Lei n.º 60/2018, closing on the 25th. Some facts: Spain sets reporting at 50 or more employees, well below the directive’s 250 First Spanish reports fall due 7 June 2027 for employers over 150 workers, and 7 June 2031 for those between 50 and 149 Portugal also sets 50, and per SRS Legal doubles the presumption of abuse after a discrimination complaint from one year to three Portugal adds sanctions for repeat breaches that can include losing tax incentives The compliance trap, where payroll can't help Under the Spanish draft, where the arithmetic mean or median total pay of one sex exceeds the other by 25%, the register must carry a written justification. Under the Portuguese draft, where an unjustified gap of 5% or more persists in a worker ca…