Pay transparency

The core aim of the EU’s Pay Transparency Directive is to ensure equal pay for equal work and to make it easier to identify and correct gender-based pay gaps. The directive was adopted in 2023 and must be fully imple-mented in the legislation of all member states by 7 June 2026 at the latest.

This means that the directive should have been implemented in Danish legislation by 7 June 2026. However, the Danish bill to amend the Danish Equal Pay Act has been delayed, and will most likely come into force on 1 January 2027. Despite this delay, as a public-sector institution, AU is under an obligation to comply with the directive and to ensure that relevant processes and practices are in line with the new requirements, despite the fact that the Danish legislation has not yet come into force. Additional requirements will phased in from June 2027.

Denmark already has regulations to ensure equal pay for equal work. The directive introduces new binding measures to ensure pay transparency in the following areas: disclosure of salary information in connection with recruitment, employees’ right to salary information and gender pay gap reporting.

From 7 June 2026, public-sector employers must ensure greater transparency about pay in connection with recruitment, the criteria used to determine how much employees are paid and information about salary levels available to employees. This means that:

• Job advertisements and recruitment processes must be gender-neutral and free from discrimination
• Employers may not ask job candidates about their previous or current salary
• AU job advertisements must provide information about the salary range or level for the position
• Salaries must be determined and set on the basis of clear, objective criteria

Your right to information about pay

As an AU employee or an applicant for a position at AU, you have a right to information that allows you to compare your salary with the average pay for comparable roles governed by your collective agreement nation-wide. You can look up this information in the ‘Salary overview’ (Lønoverblik) database.

The salary overview database is a statistical tool published by the government that gives public-sector employ-ees and employers access to detailed salary statistics for all job categories in the state sector. (The database is only available in Danish. If you don’t read Danish and need help searching the database, you can contact your local HR support team.)

From 7 June 2027, further requirements will be introduced for larger workplaces regarding the reporting of gender-disaggregated pay data and pay gaps between women and men.

Further details on the forthcoming reporting and follow-up requirements will be provided once the national framework and the details of implementation have been finalised.