Nicola Harkin

So the Pay Transparency Directive, really the aim of it is to work towards achieving better gender equality across the EU.

And within it, there's a range of provisions and I probably bucket them into the more straightforward provisions and the very complex provisions.

So in the straightforward bucket...

There's a couple of provisions around pre-employment rules, around recruitment, around the provision of job salary information, either in the job ad or prior to interview or otherwise prior to employment.

Rules around prohibition of pay secrecy clauses and rules prohibiting employers from asking candidates about current pay or previous pay history.

And then in the probably more administratively burdensome provisions are a lot of provisions around the idea of evaluating all of the work within your organisation and carrying out this job evaluation exercise, which will categorise all of your workers into work of equal value.

And that, you know, within itself will then, I think, create, that's where the real work is for employers in preparing for this directive.

It doesn't look like it, no.

I mean, the pay transparency bill wasn't included in the priority list for the summer 2026 legislative programme.

It is in the programme, but not on the priority list.

So, I mean, it's unlikely, but really impossible to see we're a week out, how it could come in on time.

But we're certainly not alone on that.

And in fact, most member states will be late in transposing the directive.

And I think that's probably reflective of

the complexity of the directive and the complexity of really bringing some of those legal provisions into practice.

I think the delays across the EU on implementation of the directive is probably reflective of that.

We have about 7,000 companies from across different sectors, small, medium, large organisations.

So a huge range of membership within IBEC.

Well, I think what we're seeing from our members is a real desire to be prepared.

But in the absence of a lot of the legal certainty to be fully prepared, there's only so much they can do.