Portugal's Overdue Pay-Transparency Bill Would Make Employers Disclose Salaries From 2027
A government bill would force Portuguese employers to reveal pay to job candidates and staff from 2027, transposing an EU directive Portugal was supposed to adopt by June.
Portugal is finally moving to make salaries less of a secret. A bill from the Ministério do Trabalho (Ministry of Labour), led by Minister Rosário Palma Ramalho, would impose a new set of pay-disclosure obligations on employers from 2027, transposing the European Union's Pay Transparency Directive into Portuguese law. The catch is that Portugal is already late: the deadline to adopt the directive fell on 7 June 2026, and the country missed it — one of several fronts on which Brussels has been pressing Lisbon over labour rules.
At its core, the proposal is about arming workers and job seekers with information. Under the directive the bill is meant to enact, employers would have to tell candidates the starting salary or pay range for a job before or during the recruitment process, and could no longer ask applicants about their pay history. Job advertisements and titles are meant to be gender-neutral. Once hired, workers would gain the right to request information on average pay levels, broken down by sex, for categories of employees doing the same work or work of equal value.
For companies, the heavier lifting is in reporting. The obligation to run a transparent remuneration policy, built on an objective evaluation of the components of each role, is not new and already applies to every employer in Portugal. But formal reporting to public authorities has so far fallen mainly on larger firms — those with more than 50 workers — and it is those duties that the bill would reinforce and expand, with the new reporting requirements kicking in from 2027. Notably, the proposal scraps the current practice of using the relatório único (single report) as the instrument for measuring pay gaps, replacing it with a dedicated transparency framework.
The directive also hands workers sharper tools when they suspect they are being underpaid because of their sex. Where reporting reveals a gender pay gap of at least 5% that an employer cannot justify on objective, gender-neutral grounds — and does not fix — the company would have to carry out a joint pay assessment with worker representatives. Crucially, the burden of proof in pay-discrimination cases shifts onto the employer, and workers who win are entitled to compensation, including full recovery of back pay.
Labour lawyers have already flagged gaps between the Portuguese text and the European template. Analysts note that the bill contains several omissions relative to the directive, and that the window it gives workers to lodge a pay-discrimination complaint falls short of the minimum the EU requires — a detail that could leave the transposition open to challenge even once it passes.
For the roughly one in ten residents of Portugal who were born abroad and now work here, the practical upshot is worth watching. Pay ranges attached to job listings would make it easier to judge an offer before committing to a move or a role, and the ban on questions about salary history could help newcomers avoid being anchored to lower pay. Employers, for their part, have until 2027 to get their pay structures and reporting systems in order. The bill still has to clear Parliament, where the government's minority position means the final shape — and the size of those omissions — is not yet settled.
