Pay Equity: Legislative Decree No. 96 of 7 May 2026 Published

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Implementation of EU Directive 2023/970 on Equal Pay for Men and Women through Pay Transparency

Transposition of EU Directive 2023/970 into Italian Law

On June 1st, the Italian Official Gazette published Law 96 of May 7, 2026, implementing the so-called “Gender pay gap transparency directive” in Italy.   The main aspects of the new law include the following.

The law outlines the principle that the law and the national collective agreements have to ensure systems to determine remuneration and for remuneration classification, grounded on criteria that are objective and gender neutral, suitable to guarantee equal pay for equal work or work of equal value.

 

Employees are entitled to pay transparency throughout their work journey:

  • before hiring, applicants have the right to receive information about the initial pay or its range, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria
  • upon hiring, employers shall make accessible the criteria that are used to determine remuneration, pay levels and pay progression (employers with less than 50 employees are not obliged to provide information about pay progression); employers that implement national collective agreements signed by comparatively more representative national unions, may simply refer to the criteria, the classification levels and economic treatment provided by the collective agreements
  • no more than once a year employees have the right to request (also through their representatives) and receive in writing, no later than two months since their request, information on the average pay levels, broken down by sex, for categories of workers performing the same work or work of equal value to theirs.

 

Employers with a headcount of at least 100 employees have also to report on pay gap between female and male workers, and more precisely:

a) the gender pay gap

b) the gender pay gap in complementary or variable components

c) the median gender pay gap

d) the median gender pay gap in complementary or variable components

e) the proportion of female and male workers receiving complementary or variable components

f) the proportion of female and male workers in each quartile pay band

g) the gender pay gap between workers by categories of workers broken down by ordinary basic wage or salary and complementary or variable components.

The report shall be due no later than June 7th, 2027 by employers with a headcount of at least 150, while employers with at least 100 employees will be obliged to provide the report no later than June 7, 2031.

The information from (a) to (f) has to be notified to a monitoring body that shall be set up within the Ministry of Labor.   Employers have to provide the information under (g) to their workers and to the workers’ representatives (and also to the labor inspectorate and the equality body upon request).

 

Employers have to conduct, in cooperation with their workers’ representatives, a joint pay assessment if:

  • the pay reporting demonstrates a difference in the average pay level between female and male workers of at least 5 % in any category of workers; and
  • the employer has not justified such a difference; and
  • the employer has not remedied the average pay difference within six months.

The outcome of the joint pay assessment has to be shared with the employees, their representative, the Ministry of labor monitoring body, and, upon request, with the labor inspectorate and the equality body.

 

The law defined the core concepts of the gender pay gap transparency directive, i.e. what constitutes “equal work” and “work of equal value” by leveraging on national collective agreements:

  • “same work” means performance of duties identical to (or within the same scope of) the example job profiles within the same pay level and statutory classification category provided for in the national collective implemented by an employer (or, in the absence of such collective agreement, provided by the national collective agreement signed by the unions that are comparatively more representative at the national level for the relevant sector);
  • “work of equal value” means the different work by performing comparable duties, as provided for by the provided for in the national collective implemented by an employer (or, in the absence of such collective agreement, provided by the national collective agreement signed by the unions that are comparatively more representative at the national level for the relevant sector).

The law outlined criteria to assess the “work of equal value”:

  • common, objective, gender-neutral criteria that take into account
    • skills
    • responsibility
    • working conditions
    • and any other factors relevant to the specific job or position
  • comparing benchmarks are the classification and grading systems under
    • the national collective agreements
    • the regional collective agreements
    • the supplementary collective agreements
    • the law
  • employers may adopt job classification and assessment systems to determine remuneration, in order to supplement national collective agreements, provided they are based on objective and gender-neutral criteria
  • the assessment of same work or work of equal value may be performed also with reference to employees of different employers, if the remuneration conditions derive from the same provision of law or national collective agreement, or derive from company collective agreements or policies established for multiple businesses of the same group.