Are Job Applicants Protected by the Directive?

Applicants Are Expressly Covered for Article 5

Article 2 of Directive (EU) 2023/970 contains a specific applicant rule: for the purposes of Article 5, the Directive applies to applicants for employment. That matters because applicants are not yet workers in the ordinary sense of an existing employment relationship. The Directive nevertheless creates protections before employment begins. Employers should therefore include recruitment teams, hiring managers, external recruiters and applicant-tracking systems within the compliance programme. Waiting until a candidate becomes an employee is too late for the pre-employment transparency requirements.

Applicants Must Receive Initial Pay Information

Article 5 requires employers to provide information about the initial pay level or its range for the position, based on objective and gender-neutral criteria. Where applicable, the employer must also provide the relevant provisions of the collective agreement applied to the position. The purpose is to give applicants meaningful information before pay is agreed. Employers therefore need a defensible process for approving salary ranges and ensuring recruiters use the same authorised information. A range created only after negotiations have already begun would undermine the objective of informed and transparent discussions.

The Information Must Arrive Early Enough for Informed Negotiation

The Directive gives employers flexibility in how the information is provided, but not in whether it arrives in time to be useful. Article 5 states that applicants should receive the information in a way that ensures informed and transparent negotiation on pay. It gives examples such as a published vacancy notice, information provided before the job interview or another method before the employment contract. Employers should choose a consistent point in the recruitment process and document it. The safest operational approach is to make sure the candidate knows the approved pay information before compensation negotiations become substantive.

Employers Must Not Ask About Pay History

Article 5 also prohibits employers from asking applicants about their pay history during current or previous employment relationships. This rule is important because historical salary can carry earlier unequal pay into a new employment relationship. Recruitment forms, screening scripts, interview guidance and external recruiter instructions should therefore be reviewed for direct or indirect salary-history questions. Employers can still discuss the pay expectations for the new role, but the process should be anchored in the value and criteria of that role rather than in what the applicant was previously paid.

Vacancy Notices and Job Titles Must Be Gender-Neutral

Article 5 requires employers to ensure that job vacancy notices and job titles are gender-neutral and that recruitment processes are conducted in a non-discriminatory manner. This means applicant protection is broader than salary-range disclosure. Employers should review titles, templates, wording, screening criteria and interview processes for avoidable gender bias. The requirement also supports the Directive's wider equal-pay objective by reducing the risk that recruitment practices channel men and women into differently valued roles before pay comparisons even begin.

Applicant Rights Do Not Depend on the 100-Worker Reporting Threshold

The 100-worker threshold is central to Article 9 recurring pay-gap reporting, but it is not the threshold for Article 5 applicant protections. A smaller employer can recruit an applicant and still need to comply with national rules implementing the Directive's pre-employment transparency requirements. Employers should therefore avoid a compliance model that begins only when the organisation becomes large enough to report. Recruitment transparency should be assessed separately from reporting size, and the organisation's hiring procedures should be updated even where Article 9 reporting is not yet mandatory.

Build Applicant Transparency Into the Recruitment Workflow

A practical implementation can assign an approved pay range to each vacancy before publication, define when the range is disclosed, remove salary-history questions, train recruiters, review vacancy language and retain evidence of the information given to candidates. Employers using external agencies should also make sure agency instructions reflect the same rules. Multi-country employers may need local variations because Member States can implement procedures differently. The core control is that pay information and recruitment conduct should be predictable, documented and based on objective gender-neutral criteria rather than improvised for each candidate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Guides

• who is covered by EU pay transparency rules
• whether the Directive applies to multinational companies

Official Sources

• Directive (EU) 2023/970 - Articles 2 and 5