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Pay transparency in Portugal

Published draft Last verified 10 August 2026 High confidence

  • Pay information requests Proposed

    Own individual pay plus sex-disaggregated average pay for worker groups performing equal work or work of equal value.

    In the published draft, not yet in force.

  • Time to respond 2 months

    Every request starts a clock. Answering one needs pay structures and equal-value groupings that already exist.

  • Salary history questions are banned

    Applicants learn the pay range before the interview, and employers may not ask what they earn today.

Portugal has published an official draft law that would partially transpose the EU Pay Transparency Directive. The text was released for public appraisal on 5 August 2026, and it is not yet in force. It would amend Law No. 60/2018, which already sets out an equal-pay analysis and corrective-plan regime that Portuguese employers must follow today.

Once adopted, the draft would add recruitment pay-range disclosure, a ban on asking candidates about salary history, a worker right to request pay information, and a reporting obligation starting at 50 employees. None of this binds employers yet. The draft still needs to go through a 20-day appraisal period and formal submission to Parliament before it becomes law.

For now, the live obligation is Law 60/2018. The draft signals where Portugal intends to go, and in several places it goes further than the Directive’s minimum requirements, including a lower reporting threshold and a faster inspector-led correction process.

The measure

Law or measure
Official draft proposal partially transposing Directive (EU) 2023/970; would amend Law No. 60/2018 and the Labour Procedure Code
Core obligations start
First day of the month following publication of the final law (proposed)
Who is covered
Nationwide proposal. Recruitment and employee-information duties are employer-facing generally; reporting would apply from 50 workers. The draft refers expressly to public and private employers.

What the law requires

How Portugal differs from the Directive

Published draft would lower mandatory reporting to 50 workers, require annual reporting at 250+ and triennial reporting at 50-249, and use a faster inspector-led correction/JPA sequence than the Directive baseline.

On at least one point the national rules go beyond the Directive minimum, so preparing to the EU baseline alone is not enough here.

What this means for employers

Your immediate obligation in Portugal is Law 60/2018’s equal-pay analysis and corrective-plan regime, which is already in force. The 2026 draft adds new layers on top of that, but they remain proposals until Parliament adopts a final text. Treat the proposed elements as a preparation checklist, not a current legal requirement.

  • Keep your Law 60/2018 processes current so you are not starting from zero when the new obligations arrive.
  • Map recruitment practices against the proposed duty to disclose an initial pay or pay range to applicants and the proposed ban on asking about salary history.
  • Plan for a two-month response window if the draft’s employee pay-information right becomes law, covering both individual pay and sex-disaggregated group averages.
  • Check your headcount against the proposed 50-employee reporting threshold, since this is lower than many employers might expect.
  • Watch the proposed reporting dates, currently set at 7 June 2027 for 250+ employers and 7 June 2031 for the 50 to 149 band, and remember these are not confirmed.
  • Understand the proposed 5% gap trigger for a joint pay assessment, which would follow an inspectorate process rather than apply automatically.

Enforcement and open questions

Competent authority
CITE; labour inspectorate; labour-ministry data-processing entity (proposed allocation of functions)
Equality body
Commission for Equality in Labour and Employment (CITE)
Penalties
The draft classifies breaches of recruitment, reporting, correction and JPA duties as very serious; employee-information breaches as serious; pay-criteria disclosure breaches as minor. Repeated violations may attract accessory sanctions. No euro amount is recorded without a separate primary citation to the general penalty scales.
What could still change
The 5 August 2026 text is an official public-appraisal draft and expressly provides only partial transposition. It may change before government submission and parliamentary adoption; configure proposed obligations separately from the live Law 60/2018 regime.

Common questions

Is Portugal's pay transparency law already in force?

No. Portugal has published a draft law, released for public appraisal on 5 August 2026, but it has not been adopted by Parliament. The only regime currently in force is Law 60/2018, which covers equal-pay analysis and corrective plans.

What pay information could employees request under Portugal's draft law?

The draft would give workers the right to their own individual pay level plus the sex-disaggregated average pay for groups doing equal work or work of equal value. Employers would have a proposed two-month window to respond to a written request, but this right is not yet in force.

Which employers would need to report pay gaps in Portugal?

The draft proposes a reporting threshold starting at 50 employees, which is lower than many employers might expect. Under the proposal, employers with 250 or more workers would report annually, first by 7 June 2027, while the 50 to 149 band would report every three years, first by 7 June 2031.

What would trigger a joint pay assessment in Portugal?

The draft sets a proposed trigger of a remaining unjustified pay gap of at least 5% in a category of workers, identified after an inspectorate process. This is a proposal only and is not yet an enforceable rule.

Author

Julius Aho

Co-founder, CTO

Julius Aho is the co-founder and CTO of Evenpay. At Evenpay he is responsible for product, engineering and AI, building the tools that make fair pay the default.