The French government presented a pay transparency bill to the Council of Ministers on Thursday, September 10, 2026, aiming to address gender wage gaps across companies nationwide.
The measure transposes a 2023 European Union directive into French law following months of delay, having originally been scheduled to take effect in early June. While the Ministry of Labour hailed the initiative as a great opportunity to modernize remuneration practices, the legislation entered cabinet discussions without any guarantee of final adoption before the current legislative term ends.
The Council of Ministers is the executive cabinet of the French government where official bills are formally reviewed before being submitted to Parliament. EU member states approved the overarching pay transparency directive in 2023 to encourage pay equity, although several private firms in France have already introduced voluntary wage disclosure practices.
Access to corporate pay statistics
Under the proposed legislation, workers will gain access to aggregate salary benchmarks for roles equivalent to their own, including median, highest, and lowest compensation figures. However, the bill explicitly prohibits the disclosure of specific individual earnings, meaning employees cannot look up the precise salary of their manager, supervisor, or desk neighbor.
The Ministry of Labour stressed that personal wage figures will remain strictly confidential under all circumstances. Public reactions gathered by French television network TF1 showed contrasting views among workers. One woman noted she would first like to know her manager's salary, while another worker said they were interested in learning their supervisor's earnings. A third citizen commented that the setup was not completely transparent and described the restriction as a shame.
According to the draft text, businesses will be obligated to report regular data on remuneration levels for identical roles or work of equal value, with figures broken down by gender. A worker interviewed by TF1 added that if pay ranges were disclosed and salary gaps became public knowledge, employees would inevitably demand salary catch-ups.
Objectives and gender wage gap data
The primary goal of transposing the European directive into national law is to combat workplace wage discrimination, specifically pay disparities between men and women performing equivalent roles.
Data from INSEE, France's national statistics bureau, highlights substantial wage inequality across sectors. In the private sector, female employees earn an average of 22 percent less than male colleagues. When comparing workers with equal working hours, the private sector gap stands at 14 percent.
Among French civil servants, overall gender pay differences are smaller, sitting at 10 percent across the board. That gap narrows to 8 percent for civil servants working equal hours and to 2 percent when comparing directly equivalent positions.
Speaking during the TF1 report, Rebecca Amsellem, president of the gender equality organization Les Glorieuses, stated that the pay gap widens significantly around age 30 or 31, coinciding with the arrival of a woman's first child. She added that once this initial gap opens, it never closes.
Opposition from employer federations and union concerns
The proposal has sparked sharp debate between French trade unions and corporate employer federations over implementation rules and business thresholds.
Trade unions have flagged several critical issues, including the minimum company size required for compliance, the number of employees needed per category to establish valid comparisons, details left to administrative decrees, and the designated authority of staff representatives.
Myriam Lebkiri, point person on gender equality for the CGT trade union, criticized the draft text in comments to news agency AFP, calling it unreadable and completely unworkable. She stated that a directive could not have been transposed worse than what was being proposed.
The draft law applies mandatory reporting to companies with 50 or more employees, mirroring the threshold used for France's existing professional equality index. Employer groups strongly oppose this requirement, pointing out that the European directive allowed voluntary participation for businesses with up to 100 workers.
Medef, France's main employer federation, denounced the bill as a monster of complexity and called for upcoming legislative debates to simplify the text. Meanwhile, the Movement of Intermediate-Sized Enterprises, known as Meti, called for an immediate suspension of the transposition process, citing costs that would be beyond the reach of French firms.
In response to corporate pushback, CFDT union leader Marylise Léon accused employer groups of fabricating complaints about administrative complexity because they ultimately do not want salary transparency.
Enforcement rules and financial penalties
Under the terms of the draft bill, companies that display significant and unjustified salary gaps will be required to institute corrective measures, though the text provides no financial sanctions for the gap itself.
In contrast, financial penalties can be imposed on employers that fail to publish required pay data. The government has not specified when parliamentary debates on the text will conclude.
