Pay Transparency Directive: What Changes for Agencies

The EU Pay Transparency Directive (Directive (EU) 2023/970) puts the formal pre-employment duties on the prospective employer, but in agency work the agency runs the advert and the candidate conversation, so the applicant-facing obligations (give the initial pay or range before the first interview, and never ask about pay history) land on whoever runs that step, which is usually you. National rules apply from 7 June 2026.

This article is practitioner guidance, not legal advice. National implementations differ; confirm specifics for your market with counsel.

Who is responsible when an agency posts on a client brief?

The legal duty sits with the prospective employer, your client, but in practice the agency executes the regulated steps. Article 5(1) of Directive (EU) 2023/970 says applicants have the right to receive the initial pay or its range, based on objective and gender-neutral criteria, and Article 5(2) bars asking about pay history. The Directive frames these as employer obligations. It does not change the fact that when an agency writes the advert, screens applicants and conducts first conversations, the agency is the party physically delivering or withholding the pay information and the party asking (or not asking) the banned questions.

Practitioner guidance from EU employment firms is consistent on the practical fix: clients should update their agency contracts to align external partners with Directive-compliant processes and messaging. So the responsibility splits into two layers. The client owns the legal exposure and the underlying pay decision; the agency owns the candidate-facing execution and should expect to be contractually bound to it. Treat both as live, because regulators and claimants will look at the recruitment step as it actually happened, not just at who signed the employment contract.

If you also want clarity on the data-protection version of this split (who is controller and who is processor when you handle candidate records on a client brief), see GDPR: are you a controller or a processor as a recruitment agency?. The pay-transparency split is conceptually similar: the duty has an owner, but the agency’s hands are on the work.

What exactly must reach the applicant, and when?

The applicant must get the initial pay or pay range, set on objective and gender-neutral criteria, no later than before the first interview. Article 5(1) lets you satisfy this in the published vacancy notice or otherwise before the interview, in a way that enables informed and transparent negotiation on pay. In short, a candidate should never reach an interview blind to what the role pays.

Two related Article 5 duties are easy to miss in an agency workflow:

1. Gender-neutral vacancy notices and job titles. Article 5(3) requires that vacancy notices and job titles are gender-neutral and that the process runs in a non-discriminatory way. “Server” not “waitress”, “police officer” not “policeman”.
2. No pay-history questions, anywhere in the process. Article 5(2) covers the application form, the screening call, the interview and informal chats about future pay. The ban reaches automated screening too, so a form field asking “current salary” has to go.

A useful nuance: the Directive bans you from asking about pay history, but it does not stop a candidate volunteering it, and it does not stop you asking about salary expectations. What it stops is using previous remuneration to anchor the offer. For the wording side of all this, our pay-transparency job ad checklist walks through a compliant vacancy line by line.

What do you do when a client sends ad copy with no range?

Hold the advert. The simplest defensible rule is that you do not publish anything applicant-facing, or run a first interview, until you have a pay figure and the objective, gender-neutral criteria behind it. “Competitive salary” does not satisfy Article 5(1); for why that phrase is now a liability, see what “competitive salary” means after the salary-history ban.

A practical intake sequence for a no-range brief:

1. Ask the client for the initial pay or the band, in writing, before you build the advert.
2. Ask which objective criteria set the band (experience, qualifications, sustained performance) so you can defend it and answer candidate questions.
3. Record who at the client supplied the figure and on what date, so the source is auditable.
4. If the client refuses, escalate in writing and flag the legal exposure to them, rather than quietly publishing a non-compliant ad in your agency’s name.
5. Only then publish, and keep the same range consistent across every board and your direct outreach.

That paper trail matters because your agency’s brand is on the advert. If a complaint lands, “the client told us to” is weaker than a dated record showing you requested the range and the criteria and acted on what you were given.

How should agency contracts and intake forms change?

Update the contract and the intake template so the pay-transparency obligations are explicit, not assumed. The Directive expects clients to align external recruiters with their compliant process, so the master services agreement and each brief should now answer four questions: who supplies the pay range, who confirms the advert wording is compliant, who is allowed to discuss pay, and who carries the cost if a non-compliant posting triggers a claim.

Concrete changes worth making:

• Add a clause requiring the client to provide the initial pay or range plus the objective criteria for every brief, as a condition of you advertising.
• Add a warranty that ad copy supplied by the client is gender-neutral and range-complete, or give yourself the right to amend it.
• Strip “current salary” and “salary history” fields from every intake form, screening script and CRM template.
• Define an escalation path for missing ranges, so consultants are not left improvising.

These are not just risk controls. A clean, range-first process is faster: candidates self-select, fewer interviews collapse over pay surprises, and your consultants stop probing earnings they are no longer allowed to ask about.

What benchmarking conversations will clients start?

Expect clients to ask you, as the market expert, to help them set defensible ranges, and expect that to become a paid part of the relationship. Once a range has to appear before interview and rest on objective, gender-neutral criteria, the old habit of “we’ll see what they ask for” stops working. Clients who never published numbers now need a number they can stand behind, and many will turn to their agency for the market reference point.

That is an opportunity, but handle it carefully. A benchmark you supply may end up as the published range and as a documented criterion in a pay-equity file, so anchor it to real market data and date it. Be ready for clients to push back when your benchmark sits above the band they had in mind; that tension is the directive working as intended. For how the same range obligation differs across markets, our salary-in-ad rules by country for 2026 breaks down where a range is already mandatory and where it is coming.

Which countries actually apply this now, and where is it delayed?

The dates are uneven, so a cross-border agency cannot treat “7 June 2026” as a single switch. That date is the Article 34 transposition deadline, the point by which member states had to have national law in place, but by mid-2026 most had not. The European Commission has confirmed the deadline did not move and that late states face infringement proceedings, yet on the ground only a small group had full law in force on time.

Market	Status as of June 2026	Practical live date
Italy	Implementing law adopted	In force
Slovakia	Implementing law adopted	In force
Poland	Recruitment-stage rules already binding	In force since 24 Dec 2025
Belgium	Partial (Fr. Community public sector)	Decree in force since 1 Jan 2025
Germany	No draft published, deadline missed	Expected 2027
France	Draft law published	Target 1 Jan 2027
Netherlands	Bill in progress, scope extended to agency workers	Target 1 Jan 2027
Ireland	Draft focused on pre-employment transparency	Late, partial

Two agency-specific flags. First, the Netherlands draft extends the personal scope to temporary agency workers, which matters directly if you place temps. Second, even where national law is late, clients with their own group policies may apply the rules early, so a German client of a Dutch parent may ask for ranges before German law forces it. Track this per country and per client, not once.

How Recruitifly helps

Recruitifly is built EU and GDPR first, and the agency-facing pieces of the Pay Transparency Directive map onto the product. Job-posting compliance checks flag a missing pay range before an advert goes live, so a no-range client brief gets caught at intake rather than after publication. Intake and screening templates can be configured without pay-history fields, keeping the Article 5(2) ban enforced by default rather than by memory. The Agency Hub keeps client briefs, the supplied range, and who provided it on the record, which is exactly the audit trail you want when responsibility is shared between your agency and the client. And the Fly assistant can draft gender-neutral, range-complete ad copy and surface where a brief is missing the figures it needs.

Recruitifly is in private beta. If you run an agency desk and want the pay-transparency and GDPR controls wired into your workflow before the national deadlines bite, talk to us and join the beta.