French Pay Ranges Await Parliament

French jobseekers will have to wait a little longer before they can see the pay range for a job before applying. French workers still cannot ask their employer for a sex-disaggregated breakdown of what people in comparable roles earn. Labour minister Jean-Pierre Farandou said on 25 August that the bill bringing the EU Pay Transparency Directive into French law will go to the Council of Ministers, the weekly cabinet meeting where draft laws are formally approved, on 9 September 2026. That is nearly three months after France missed the EU’s 7 June deadline (Boursorama/AFP, Les Echos). The delay matters because French law already says unequal pay is unlawful. What is missing is the machinery that lets workers find out whether the rule is being followed before they are forced into court.

What French Law Covers — and Where It Goes Quiet

France is not coming to this cold. Employers must provide equal pay for equal work, and companies with at least 50 employees already publish an annual equality index scored out of 100, with corrective duties kicking in below 75 (Éditions Tissot, Legifrance). Workers can challenge pay discrimination in court, and French law partly shifts the burden of proof: the employee presents facts suggesting discrimination, then the employer has to justify the difference (Service-Public).

The difficulty is that the information needed to use those rights is still largely out of reach. Employers do not have to show applicants a salary range. They are not barred from asking candidates what they currently earn. Employees have no right to request average pay data, broken down by sex, for comparable roles (Ogletree Deakins France, Entreprendre.Service-Public). In practice, a worker has the right to equal pay but not the evidence needed to know whether they are receiving it.

What the Directive Would Change

The EU directive, agreed by member states in 2023, changes the balance of information at two points in working life (Directive (EU) 2023/970).

At recruitment stage, employers must disclose a pay range for the advertised role and cannot ask candidates about salary history. That changes the opening move in pay talks. Instead of anchoring an offer to what someone earned before, the employer has to state what the job is worth (European Commission).

Once inside the workplace, any employee can ask for aggregated pay data, broken down by sex, for people doing equal work or work of equal value. This does not mean access to named colleagues’ payslips. It means category-level averages. If the data shows a gap of at least 5% in any worker category, and the employer cannot justify it objectively, management must carry out a joint assessment with employee representatives. That process is meant to identify the causes and agree corrective measures (Dairia Avocats).

The French draft may go beyond the EU minimum by applying some obligations from 50 employees, below the directive’s reporting floor of 100 workers. Unions welcomed the lower threshold, while criticising slower calculation cycles for smaller firms (TPE Actu).

Who Is Exposed, and Who Can Act

The missed deadline does not mean every French employer became liable for new duties on 8 June. EU directives generally need national legislation before they bind private companies. Until France passes its law, the new transparency obligations cannot be enforced against private firms (Morgan Lewis, Noerr).

The immediate legal risk falls on the French state. The European Commission can take France to the EU Court of Justice for missing the deadline and ask the court to impose financial penalties in the same case. It used that route in July 2026 against France, Ireland, Spain and the Netherlands over late transposition of the NIS2 cybersecurity directive (European Commission).

The chain from here is procedural but important. Farandou brings the bill to cabinet on 9 September. Cabinet approval sends it to Parliament, where both the Assemblée nationale and the Sénat must pass it. Only after enactment does the new information right become something a French employee can invoke against a private employer. The Commission can penalise France for delay. It cannot order an individual French company to publish a salary range.

Germany’s experience is a warning about what happens after the law is passed. According to the IAB, Germany’s federal labour-market research institute, only 4% of eligible workers ever used its existing pay transparency right, and researchers found no measurable effect on pay inequality in covered firms (IAB-Forum). A right to data matters only if workers know it exists, employers classify jobs honestly, and inspectors or courts can move when the figures expose a gap.

France’s delay does not abolish the right. It postpones the evidence workers need to test whether the right is worth anything.