European Commission Weighs Article 258 Infringement Action Against Portugal as 7 June Pay-Transparency Directive Transposition Deadline Lapses Without National Diploma

The European Commission confirmed on 10 June 2026 that it is "evaluating the situation" and may open an Article 258 TFEU (Tratado sobre o Funcionamento da União Europeia — Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union) infringement procedure against Portugal and the other Member States that failed to notify national transposition measures for Directive (UE) 2023/970 — the EU Pay Transparency Directive — by the binding 7 June 2026 deadline.

Portugal sits among the bloc's laggards: as of the deadline date, the country had not adopted nor formally notified Brussels of a diploma transposing the directive into Portuguese labour law. With at least ten Member States in the same position, the Commission's standard infringement playbook — formal letter of notice, reasoned opinion, Court of Justice referral — is now on the table.

What the Directive Requires

Directive (UE) 2023/970, formally the Diretiva relativa à transparência salarial (Pay Transparency Directive), entered into force on 6 June 2023 with a three-year transposition window that closed on 7 June 2026. The directive obliges employers and Member States to put in place four structural pillars:

• Salary-range disclosure at hiring stage. Employers must publish initial salary ranges or base remuneration in job postings, or disclose them in writing before the first interview. Asking candidates about prior salary history becomes prohibited.
• Worker right to pay information. Employees gain the right to request, in writing, individual pay levels and average remuneration broken down by gender for equivalent work or work of equal value within their employer.
• Pay-gap reporting and joint assessments. Employers with 100 or more workers must report gender pay-gap data publicly; where the unadjusted gap exceeds 5% and cannot be objectively justified, a joint pay assessment with worker representatives becomes mandatory.
• Compensation and sanctions regime. Member States must guarantee compensation for victims of pay discrimination, including back-pay and bonuses, and impose effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties on infringing employers.

Portugal's Transposition Status

The current Portuguese architecture rests on the Código do Trabalho (CT — Labour Code) equal-pay clauses, the Lei n.º 60/2018 of 21 August (Lei da Igualdade Salarial — Salary Equality Law), the CITE (Comissão para a Igualdade no Trabalho e no Emprego — Commission for Equality in Labour and Employment) oversight mandate, and the ACT (Autoridade para as Condições do Trabalho — Working Conditions Authority) enforcement track. None of these instruments individually satisfies the directive's four pillars in full, and no consolidated transposition diploma had been published in the Diário da República (DRE — Official Gazette) by the 7 June deadline.

A pre-legislative draft was reportedly circulated within the Ministério do Trabalho, Solidariedade e Segurança Social (MTSSS — Ministry of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security) and the Concertação Social tripartite body in late Q1 2026, but the autumn-2025 government change and the Pacote Salário Mínimo (Minimum Wage Package) negotiations through Q4 absorbed the labour-policy bandwidth that the directive transposition would have required.

How the Article 258 Infringement Track Unfolds

The Commission's enforcement sequence proceeds in three formal stages. First, a Letter of Formal Notice (Carta de Notificação Formal) gives the Member State two months to respond. Second, if the response is unsatisfactory, a Reasoned Opinion (Parecer Fundamentado) sets a further compliance deadline. Third, the Commission may refer the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union (TJUE — Tribunal de Justiça da União Europeia), which can impose a lump-sum fine plus a daily penalty payment until transposition is complete.

Recent precedent on EU directive transposition penalties — including the December 2024 Court ruling against three Member States that failed to transpose the Whistleblowing Directive — points to penalties in the order of €10,000-€30,000 per day of delay, with lump-sum components in the low millions. The pay-transparency directive's social-policy weight and explicit Article 157 TFEU link to the equal-pay-for-equal-work principle make leniency at TJUE level unlikely.

The EU-Wide Pay-Gap Backdrop

The directive arrives against a 2024 Eurostat reading of 11% for the unadjusted EU gender pay gap (women's hourly gross earnings vs. men's). Portugal's national reading sat at 13.1% in the 2024 Eurostat tape (Comissão de Igualdade no Trabalho e no Emprego baseline tracker), with the public-sector gap narrower than the private-sector gap and finance, insurance and IT carrying the highest sector-level differentials.

INE's Quadros de Pessoal (Personnel Tables) annual survey published in late 2025 placed the gross hourly-wage gap at 12.8% across the private sector and the median-wage gap at 10.5%, with both readings narrowing only marginally year-on-year. The 5% trigger threshold in the directive would catch a substantial share of Portuguese employers above the 100-worker pillar.

Commission Position and Next Steps

A Commission spokesperson reiterated on 10 June that no extension of the transposition deadline will be granted and that "the priority of the Commission continues to be timely and correct transposition resulting in real change for workers." Member States have a few weeks of grace before the first batch of formal infringement letters issues — typically tracked at the College of Commissioners' July monthly infringement package.

For Portugal, the political path forward runs through the Concertação Social July round, a possible accelerated DRE publication track for an MTSSS-drafted Decreto-Lei (Decree-Law) on the directive's four pillars, and a parallel Assembleia da República (Assembly of the Republic) approval of the related Código do Trabalho amendments. The Government's window to close the transposition before the Letter of Formal Notice arrives is narrow but not impossible.

What This Means for Employers and Workers in Portugal

For employers operating in Portugal — including foreign-owned tech, shared-services and outsourcing operations across Lisboa, Porto and Braga — the directive's substantive obligations apply directly even in the absence of national transposition, under the doctrine of vertical direct effect for sufficiently clear and precise directive provisions. Practical implications:

• Job postings need salary ranges. Roles advertised on Sapo Emprego, LinkedIn Portugal, Net-Empregos and StepStone Portugal should already include salary ranges or base-remuneration disclosures for new postings opened from 7 June onward.
• Salary-history questions become legally risky. Recruiters at companies subject to the directive should remove prior-salary questions from screening interviews and application forms.
• Pay-gap auditing becomes a 2026-2027 priority. Employers above the 100-worker pillar should commission an internal pay-gap audit ahead of the first mandatory reporting cycle, regardless of when the Portuguese transposition diploma lands.
• Workers' right to pay information. Employees can submit written requests for pay-band information to HR or to their workers' commission, with CITE as the escalation route if responses do not arrive within reasonable time.
• Foreign-resident HR teams. Multinational employers with Portuguese subsidiaries should align Portuguese practice with parent-company pay-transparency policies that may already comply with French (Loi Rixain), Spanish (Real Decreto 902/2020) or Irish (Gender Pay Gap Information Act 2021) transparency frameworks.

Sources: Diretiva (UE) 2023/970 do Parlamento Europeu e do Conselho, de 10 de maio de 2023 (EUR-Lex); European Commission press materials on the 7 June 2026 transposition deadline; Jornal Económico desk read, 10 June 2026; Eurostat Gender Pay Gap Statistics 2024; INE Quadros de Pessoal 2025; CITE annual report on labour equality; Lei n.º 60/2018 of 21 August (Diário da República).