On September 10, 2026, France's Ministere du Travail et des Solidarites presented to the Council of Ministers a draft bill transposing Directive (EU) 2023/970 on equal pay through pay transparency. The Direction generale du travail communique, backed by the September 2026 press kit, fixes the national design: employers with more than 49 employees must declare seven gender pay-gap indicators, the Index de l'egalite professionnelle stays for the 2027 cycle, and the new indicators start from 2028.
The text is a projet de loi: it is not promulgated and does not yet bind anyone. Member States had until June 7, 2026 to transpose; France is presenting the bill three months after that deadline. The Conseil des ministres step is still when the French-specific choices become visible for every private employer of 50 or more staff, every in-scope public employer, and every foreign group with French operations.
Who must report the seven indicators, and from when?
Private employers with more than 49 employees must declare seven gender pay-gap indicators. The first six are automated and annual; France states it is the only Member State to automate that filing. The seventh measures pay gaps between women and men in the same category of workers performing work of equal value. It cannot be automated. Its filing frequency is adapted to headcount; the communique does not yet publish those frequencies.
Public employers managing at least 150 agents move to the new indicators from 2028. Other public employers in scope start on June 1, 2030. Until then the current index stays in place. The Index from the law of September 5, 2018, reinforced on July 19, 2023, is kept for the 2027 private-sector declaration, then the seven directive indicators take over from 2028.
| Population | Instrument | First application |
|---|---|---|
| Private employers, more than 49 employees | Index Egapro (current) | 2027 (last cycle) |
| Private employers, more than 49 employees | 7 directive indicators (6 automated annual; 7th equal-value) | From 2028 |
| Public employers managing at least 150 agents | New indicators | From 2028 |
| Other public employers in scope | New indicators | June 1, 2030 |
| Public employers (interim) | Current index kept | Until the new indicators apply |
What changes for job ads, contracts and individual pay data?
Four new rights apply to employees and public agents, independent of the reporting calendar. Talent acquisition, legal and compensation must implement them on the face of the text, not wait for 2028.
- A contractual clause that stops a worker disclosing pay information is prohibited.
- The employer must state the pay range when the job offer is published, and the applicable collective provisions before hiring.
- A worker may obtain the average pay of their equal-value work category, provided they do not obtain personal and confidential information on others.
- The burden of proof reverses when a dispute arises from the new employer pay duties.
Job-ad templates, offer letters, contracts and internal rules that still contain pay-secrecy language will have to be rewritten. Compensation must produce a category average without releasing individual files. Without equal-value categories, neither the individual right nor the 5% test is computable.
When must a gap above 5 percent be corrected?
When the measured pay gap for women and men in the same equal-value category exceeds 5% and the employer cannot justify it by objective reasons unrelated to sex, the gap must be corrected by agreement or in an action plan. That is the French rendering of the directive's joint pay-assessment logic, tied to the seventh indicator rather than to the automated six.
If work of equal value is not already mapped in the job architecture, the first filing year is also the first year the 5% test is computable, and the correction duty will already apply. Objective justifications (role, location, seniority, performance) need an evidence file.
What should HR, payroll and labour-law teams do before 2028?
Treat 2027 Index Egapro as a live production cycle. In parallel, map jobs to equal-value categories, put a pay range on every published offer, inventory pay-secrecy clauses, and assign an owner for the seventh indicator. Public employers managing at least 150 agents share the 2028 start; other public employers in scope have until June 1, 2030, but their HRIS rebuild is the long pole. Foreign groups with French headcount above 49 employees cannot treat this as a Paris-only HR project: reporting, job ads and contract clauses all sit in French labour law.
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Confirm whether each French entity sits above 49 employees. Diary the 2027 Index filing and the 2028 indicator switch. Brief compensation, talent acquisition, labour relations and, in the public sector, the HRIS owners who must rebuild the calculation. Continuous, per-jurisdiction real-time monitoring is how Obsidian surfaces this kind of Conseil des ministres publication the moment the ministry releases it.
