The 2023/970/EU Directive on Equal Pay for Equal Work between Men and Women has recently come into force to strengthen the application of the right to “equal pay for equal work or work of equal value” through novel transparency and enforcement mechanisms.
While various laws preventing discrimination at work and promoting equality between men and women already exist in Cyprus, this new EU Directive goes one step further to change the way that businesses operate until today by subjecting employers to pay transparency obligations and affording employees the right to enforce equal pay for equal work despite their gender.
The new provisions take effect from the early stage of pre-employment i.e. employers must post their job vacancies in a gender-neutral way, indicate the initial pay or its range to potential employees, either through the job postings or before the job interview, as well as not inquire about past or current salaries, in order to ensure an informed and transparent negotiation on pay between them and potential employees.
During the employment, employers must ensure that the criteria used to determine their employees’ pay, pay level and pay progression are objective and gender-neutral and are easily accessible to all employees. Employees shall have the right to receive information on their individual pay level and the average pay level, broken down by sex and categories of employees performing work or work of value equal to theirs. Employees will be free to disclose their payment information given that contractual clauses prohibiting employees disclosing their pay information will no longer be permitted.
Businesses employing 100 or more employees shall be obliged to report on the pay gap between their female and male employees, initially until the 7th July 2027 and thereafter on an annual or quarterly basis, depending on the size of their workforce. Should there be an unjustified gender difference of 5% or more, employers must, inter alia, remedy such pay difference. Worker’s representatives, labor inspectorate and equality bodies will have an important role as they will be entitled to ask for clarifications of this report and employers will be obliged to give a response.
Non-compliance on the part of Cyprus employers may lead to fines, full compensation through court proceedings as well as exclusion from participation in public procurement procedures.
Cyprus will have to transpose the provisions of the EU Directive into national law by the 7th June 2026.
Contact our team at info@pamboridis.com should you wish to find out more.
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