Dutch Companies Will Be Required to Disclose Salaries in the Hiring Process Under New EU Law
From June 2026, EU law requires employers across Europe to disclose salary ranges in job postings and before interviews, and to ban salary history questions. The Netherlands has delayed full implementation to January 2027.
A new EU law will require Dutch employers to disclose salary ranges to job applicants as part of the hiring process, ending the widespread practice of omitting pay information from job postings. The EU Pay Transparency Directive (Directive 2023/970) was adopted by the European Parliament in May 2023, with a transposition deadline of 7 June 2026 for all member states. The Netherlands has confirmed it will miss that deadline and is now targeting 1 January 2027 for full national implementation.
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What the law requires
The directive's main obligations for employers are as follows. Employers must provide information about the starting salary or its range in the vacancy announcement or before the job interview. It is not permitted to inquire about an applicant's remuneration from current or previous employment. Job vacancies must be worded in gender-neutral terms.
Employees will also gain the right to request information about pay scales, broken down by gender, for colleagues doing the same or equivalent work. This requires employers to have objective, gender-neutral systems for job evaluation and classification in place.
Employers with a workforce of 100 or more must publish information about the pay gap between female and male staff. If an unjustified pay gap of more than 5 percent is found and not corrected within six months, the employer must carry out a joint pay review that includes corrective measures, in consultation with employee representatives such as trade unions and works councils.
Sanctions and burden of proof
Employers who fail to comply may face enforcement by the Dutch Labour Inspectorate as well as litigation. Under the directive, the burden of proof is reversed: in cases of suspected pay discrimination, it is up to the employer to prove they did not discriminate, not up to the employee to prove that they did.
Non-compliance can lead to sanctions including fines or legal proceedings. The goal is equal pay for equal work, with a particular focus on closing the gender pay gap.
Why vague phrases are no longer enough
The directive sets a clear minimum. Salary information in job postings must include at least one of the following: a concrete salary range, or a reference to an applicable collective labour agreement. Vague descriptions such as "market-rate salary" or "attractive terms of employment" will not meet the requirements.
The Netherlands is late but not alone
The Netherlands announced on 15 September 2025 that it would not meet the June 2026 deadline, citing a need for more time to develop legislation that employers can comply with effectively and with the least possible administrative burden. The European Commission has rejected requests from member states to postpone, stressing that delays could lead to infringement proceedings.
Because of the Dutch delay, the reporting obligation for employers with 150 or more employees is expected to first apply to 2027 data, with the first report due in 2028, a year later than originally required.
Many Dutch employers already ahead
According to research by the Academy for Labour Market Communication, 61 percent of Dutch organisations already include salary information transparently in job postings, with a further 6 percent planning to do so soon. Around 14 percent have taken no steps at all.
Research also shows that job postings with a clear salary indication can attract up to 45 percent more applications than those without. For employers, transparency is therefore not just a legal obligation but increasingly a competitive advantage in the labour market.
