The Decree covers all employees, i.e. subordinate workers, engaged under standard employment contracts in the public and private sectors, regardless of contract duration (fixed-term or open-ended) or working time (full-time or part-time), and including directors and senior managers (dirigenti). 

Domestic workers and workers engaged under intermittent or on-call contracts are excluded from the Decree's scope. Neither exclusion has a counterpart in the Directive; this is a national policy choice by the Italian legislator rather than an implementation of an option in the EU text.

The Decree does not define "pay structures" as a standalone term. However, its provisions on pay, pay levels and pay-setting criteria together form a substantive framework that defines what a pay structure consists of and how it must be organised.

However, the Decree has indicated that the classification and pay-grading systems included in the CCNL applied are the primary reference framework in the system evolving around pay transparency.

Therefore, even if there is not a single provision in the Decree that is labelled under “pay structure”, several concepts and provisions together define, describe and render transparent what a "pay structure" is.

Yes. The Decree provides guidance on how employers should categorise both "same work" and "work of equal value", framed primarily around Italy's CCNL architectures.

Work is treated as the "same work" where it is performed in identical or comparable roles (mansioni) falling within the legal category under the CCNL applied by the employer. Where no CCNL applies, the comparison falls back on the CCNL for the relevant sector signed by the most representative organisations.

"Work of equal value", meaning work that differs in nature but is nonetheless comparable, is assessed by reference to the pay grades and classification levels in the CCNL applied by the employer, or the relevant sectoral CCNL where none applies. The assessment must use common, objective and gender-neutral criteria and take into account, at minimum, skills, responsibility and working conditions, plus any other relevant factors.

The classification and pay-grading systems established by CCNLs, decentralised or supplementary bargaining, or statute are the primary reference point for comparison. Additional company-level systems are also permitted, provided they are objective and gender-neutral.

Further clarification of the "same work"/"work of equal value" concept may still follow: Article 4(6) of the Decree allows the Minister for Labour and Social Policies to adopt guidelines on the implementation of Article 4 by 31 December 2026, although these guidelines are discretionary rather than mandatory and have not yet been issued.

Local law requires employers to disclose to job applicants the initial pay or relevant pay range applicable to the position, set on the basis of objective, gender-neutral criteria, together with the relevant provisions of the collective agreement applied by the employer to the position. This information must be provided in the notices and vacancy announcements publicising the job opportunity.

The definition of pay (retribuzione)  is construed broadly, as the basic salary or wage and all sums and benefits paid by the employer, directly or indirectly, including in kind, to the worker in connection with the employment relationship, including complementary or variable components.

Article 5(1) of the Decree requires pay information to be included directly in the notices and job advertisements publicising the vacancy, making the vacancy notice the primary, effectively mandatory disclosure channel. 

On the one hand, the prohibition refers to "applicants for employment" without carving out internal applicants, on the other hand  the provision title refers to the obligation before the hiring. It seems prudent to believe that the ban  applies equally to an existing employee applying for a different role internally, such as a promotion or transfer.

The Decree contains no express prohibition on an employer using salary history information it already holds when setting pay for internal hires or promotions, unlike the position for external applicants, where employers are barred from actively seeking out salary history.

Notices and vacancy announcements publicizing public and private job opportunities must be drafted according to gender-neutral criteria, including as regards the professional qualifications required for the role.

Under the Decree employers must make available to workers the criteria used to determine pay, pay scales (pay levels) and pay progression, which must be objective and gender-neutral.

Upon request, the employer must made available to each employee their own individual pay level and the average pay levels, broken down by sex, for workers performing the same work or work of equal value.

Employers must also inform workers annually of their right to request this information and the steps to exercise it. The Decree prohibits any contractual clause restricting a worker from disclosing their own pay.

The pay-setting and pay-progression criteria required under the Decree must be made easily accessible to workers proactively; employers cannot wait for a specific request.

By contrast, the individual and comparative pay-level information is request-driven: it must be provided in writing on request, and may be requested once per year.

Workers may exercise the right to be informed directly or through their workers' representatives and all information provided to workers must be presented in a format accessible to persons with disabilities, taking into account their particular needs.

The Decree requires equal pay comparisons to be based on objective and gender-neutral criteria, with collective agreements, classification systems, skills, responsibilities and working conditions as the principal factors.

The Decree does not go further than this baseline. 

Headcount affects the scope of these obligations in two distinct ways.

The first concerns pay progression criteria  as employers with fewer than 50 employees are exempt from the obligation to make pay progression criteria accessible to workers.

The second concerns gender pay gap reporting which applies only to employers with at least 100 employees. 

The Decree uses two related but distinct definitions for a worker's right to pay information.

The first is "remuneration/pay": the ordinary basic or minimum wage or salary, together with any other consideration a worker receives, in cash or in kind, directly or indirectly, from their employer in respect of their employment, including complementary or variable pay components.

The second, narrower concept is "remuneration/pay level": the metric used for the right-to-information exercise, being gross annual pay and the corresponding gross hourly pay. This covers ongoing and fixed remuneration components, excluding certain non-structural individual financial benefits (see below).

The Decree excludes from the concept of pay level non-structural individual financial benefits, defined by four cumulative characteristics: the benefit must be granted on a personal basis, be discretionary, be temporary, and not be generalised across the same category of workers. Pay level is essential for defining the right to information of each employee.

The Decree does not expressly name stock options, voluntary benefits or off-payslip items as excluded categories. 

Employers must provide the requested information within a reasonable period of time but, in any event, within two months of the request. This right may not be exercised more than once per year. For comparative, average pay level data, employers may discharge the obligation by publishing the data on the company intranet or in a reserved section of the company website, rather than responding to each request individually.

Workers have the right to request and receive, in writing, information on their own individual pay level together with the average pay levels, broken down by sex, for categories of workers performing the same work or work of equal value.

The right to information applies regardless of employer size: no headcount threshold limits a worker's right to request their individual pay level and the average pay levels broken down by sex. The only specific on a threshold concerns the pay progression criteria, for which the Decree exempts employers with fewer than 50 workers.

Workers may also request and receive this information through their workers' representatives, in accordance with national law and/or practice, or through an equality body.

If the information a worker receives is alleged to be imprecise or incomplete, the Decree gives the worker the right to request further clarifications about the data provided, either personally or through their workers' representatives. The employer's response to such a request must be reasoned (motivata).

Yes, information has to be delivered annually on the existence of the right.

The Decree does not specify a language in which this information must be provided. There is no provision in the Decree requiring disclosure in Italian specifically, nor one permitting disclosure in English. In the absence of express guidance, employers should have regard to the general principle that information addressed to the workforce must be accessible and fully understood to all the employees. Information that may be also the subject matter of inspections by Authorities is ordinarily provided in Italian, while English is permitted and can be additional.

Workers retain an unrestricted right to disclose their own pay to whomever they choose, and employers cannot curtail that right. Comparative pay information obtained pursuant to an information request may, however, be made subject to a purpose-limitation restriction imposed by the employer, as it concerns other workers and carries its own confidentiality sensitivities.

Italian law does not require any formal act of rescission to neutralise existing pay secrecy clauses. Clauses that conflict with mandatory legal provisions, such as the prohibition introduced by the Decree, are automatically void and unenforceable.

Yes, the Decree adopts the same deadlines as the Directive, without national acceleration or deferral.

Under the Decree, employers subject to the reporting obligation must disclose seven data points concerning their organisation, giving a rounded picture of pay disparities by sex.

• the gender pay gap expressed as a mean figure.
• the gender pay gap in complementary or variable components of pay.
• the median gender pay gap, which complements the mean figure above.
• the median gender pay gap in complementary or variable components.
• the proportion of female and male workers receiving complementary or variable components of pay at all.
• the proportion of female and male workers in each quartile pay band, which illustrates how the sexes are distributed across the organisation's pay scale.
• the gender pay gap between workers by categories of workers, broken down by ordinary basic wage or salary and by complementary or variable components.

The Decree does not specify a uniform reference or "snapshot" date. The reference period is the previous calendar year, but no fixed date, such as 31 December, is designated for headcount assessment. Further guidance from the competent authority is likely to be needed on the methodology for determining whether an employer crosses a relevant headcount threshold at a particular moment in time.

Data as the mean and median gender pay gap, the gap in complementary/variable components, the proportion of workers receiving complementary/variable components, and the quartile distribution must be communicated by the employer to the national monitoring body, which is responsible for publishing that data. Employers may, in addition, make the same data publicly available themselves, including via their own website, but this is expressed as an option for the employer rather than a standalone publication obligation.

The remaining data point, the gender pay gap broken down by category of workers, must be made accessible by the employer to workers and their representatives, and is transmitted to the labour inspectorate and the competent equality bodies only on request, together with the corresponding data for the previous four years where available. 

The Decree requires employers to confirm the accuracy of pay-gap data after consulting workers' representatives, who have access to the methodology applied, and requires the monitoring body to publish the data submitted to it. However, the Decree does not itself specify the format of that publication, in particular whether individual employers will be named or whether the monitoring body will anonymise and aggregate data on a sector-wide basis. These operational and presentational aspects are left to the further ministerial decree(s), which, as at the date of this questionnaire, has not yet been issued.

No. The Decree, consistent with the Directive it transposes, frames the gender pay gap exclusively by reference to "lavoratori di sesso maschile" and "lavoratori di sesso femminile" (male-sex and female-sex workers) and contains no provision addressing workers who do not identify with either sex or with a binary gender category. 

No. The Decree adopts the same thresholds as the Directive without modification, as summarised in the table below.

Beyond reproducing the Directive's 100/150/250-employee thresholds, the Decree introduces no other threshold specific to the Italian context. The only optional measure Italy has taken up is the exemption for employers with fewer than 50 workers from the obligation to make pay progression criteria accessible.

The Decree introduces no sector-specific exemptions or adjusted requirements. The obligations apply uniformly across all sectors, public and private, and across all employment relationships within scope.

Employers must remedy unjustified gender pay differences within a reasonable period of time. Neither the Decree nor the Directive fixes a precise statutory deadline for this general obligation; the exception is the specific six-month timeframe applying to the joint pay assessment, discussed at point (e) below.

Employers must act in close cooperation with workers' representatives, the labour inspectorate and/or the equality body, rather than addressing the issue unilaterally.

Remedial measures must include an analysis of the employer's existing gender-neutral job evaluation and classification systems, or establishment of such systems where none exist, to exclude direct or indirect pay discrimination on grounds of sex going forward.

Following a joint pay assessment, the employer must remedy unjustified pay differences within a reasonable period, acting in close cooperation, in accordance with national law and/or practice, with workers' representatives. The labour inspectorate and/or equality body may also be asked to participate.

Cooperation with the labour inspectorate and equality body is participatory rather than mandatory; cooperation with workers' representatives is mandatory throughout.

Local law does not precisely define "close cooperation". The Decree frames the obligation as cooperation in accordance with national law and/or practice, leaving the modalities to Italian industrial relations law and practice. The standard falls short of requiring formal agreement with workers' representatives, but active engagement is expected. In practice this would typically take the form of joint consultation at company level, potentially through the relevant trade union structures (RSA/RSU).

A joint pay assessment becomes mandatory where an employer subject to pay reporting meets all three of the following conditions cumulatively.

First, the pay reporting must demonstrate a difference in the average pay level between female and male workers of at least 5% in any category of workers.

Second, the employer must not have justified that difference on the basis of objective, gender-neutral criteria.

Third, the employer must not have remedied the unjustified difference within six months of the date on which the pay reporting was submitted.

Where these three conditions are met, the joint pay assessment must be conducted in cooperation with workers' representatives. 

The joint pay assessment must bring together (i) an analysis of the proportion of female and male workers in each category of workers, (ii) information on average pay levels and on complementary or variable components for each category of workers, broken down by sex, (iii) any differences in average pay levels between female and male workers in each category of workers, (iv) the reasons for such differences, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria where any exist, as established jointly by the workers' representatives and the employer, (v) the proportion of female and male workers who benefited from pay improvements following their return from maternity, paternity, parental or carers' leave, where such improvements occurred in the relevant category during the period in which the leave was taken, (vi) the measures the employer proposes to address differences in pay that are not justified by objective, gender-neutral criteria, (vii) an evaluation of the effectiveness of measures adopted following any previous joint pay assessments.

Employers must make the joint pay assessment available to workers and workers' representatives, communicate it to the monitoring body, and make it available to the labour inspectorate and equality body on request.

On who must receive the joint pay assessment, the Italian Decree mirrors the Directive.

Employers must make the joint pay assessment available to workers and workers' representatives proactively, and communicate it to the monitoring body as a matter of course. The labour inspectorate and equality body are entitled to receive it only on request.

This is addressed through a restriction on who may access certain information, rather than a blanket restriction on disclosure. Access to information on the individual right to pay information, gender pay gap reporting and the joint pay assessment is reserved exclusively to workers' representatives, the labour inspectorate and the equality bodies where it would involve the direct or indirect disclosure of the pay of an identifiable worker. Workers' representatives or the equality body advise workers on any claims connected with the equal pay principle without disclosing the actual pay levels of individual workers performing the same work or work of equal value. For monitoring purposes the information is made available without restriction to the monitoring body.

The Decree does not create a standalone penalty for each transparency breach; it builds a two-tier system where information failures matter mainly once they amount to, or evidence, an established pay discrimination under the Equal Opportunities Code, which the Decree expressly recalls.

The Equal Opportunities Code originally set a criminal fine (ammenda) of €250-1,500 for direct/indirect discrimination, but following decriminalisation by D.Lgs. 8/2016 this is now an administrative fine of €5,000-10,000.

Beyond the fine, employers receiving public benefits or public contracts face a more serious accessory sanction under the Equal Opportunities Code: immediate notification to the granting authority, possible revocation of the benefit, and exclusion from further public funding or contracts for up to two years in serious or repeat cases.

Transparency violations (missing salary ranges in job ads, incomplete answers to pay-data requests, opaque classification criteria) are not automatically sanctioned but become strong evidence supporting a discrimination finding, which then triggers the Equal Opportunities Code's penalties.

Separately, the Decree opens judicial remedies under the Equal Opportunities Code — not itself a penalty, but the procedural route through which discrimination is established.

A reversed burden of proof (originating in Directive 2023/970, implemented via the Equal Opportunities Code) requires the employee to first show precise, consistent factual/statistical indicators of discrimination; the burden then shifts to the employer to prove objective, gender-neutral justification, failing which the violation is deemed established and the Equal Opportunities Code's sanctions apply.

A worker who considers themselves wronged by an alleged infringement of the right to equal pay does not find a self-contained set of remedies in the Decree itself. Instead, Article 12 of the Decree (Tutela giudiziaria) provides that violations of rights arising under the Decree are subject to the remedies set out in the Code on Equal Opportunities (Legislative Decree No. 198/2006).

Specifically:

i) Court proceedings. Under Article 36 of the Code, a worker who wishes to bring a claim for an alleged infringement of the equal pay principle, has access to a specific proceeding in front of the Employment Tribunal and if it finds the violation established, the Tribunal orders cessation of the unlawful conduct and removal of its effects by a reasoned, immediately enforceable decree, awarding damages (including non-material damages) where requested and to the extent proven.

ii) Collective and representative action. The Decree confirms that the remedies under the Code may also be activated, on specific delegation (delega), by workers' representatives referred.

In the mentioned proceeding, the shift of the burden of proof applies. Therefore, the claimant has to produces factual elements (such as statistical data on hiring, pay regimes, assignment of duties and grades, transfers, career progression and dismissals) capable of grounding, in precise and consistent terms, a presumption that discriminatory acts, agreements or conduct based on sex have occurred; in such a case the burden shifts to the employer to prove that no discrimination exists.

In addition, the Code extends the judicial protection described above to any prejudicial conduct against the person harmed by a discrimination, or against any other person, taken in reaction to any activity directed at securing compliance with the principle of equal treatment between men and women.

The Decree provides that one or more decrees of the Minister of Labour and Social Policies, to be adopted within ninety days of the Decree's entry into force, shall define, among other things, "technical assistance and any training initiatives to support employers, with a view to facilitating compliance with the obligations laid down in this decree."

The Decree does not itself set out the substance of any such assistance or training; it commits to defining these measures through subsequent ministerial decrees. 

The technical assistance and training provision is included in an article that states that  "the provisions of this Article apply to employers with at least one hundred employees." Those employers are therefore the one subject to the pay gap reporting regime.

Not applicable.

The most notable point for this jurisdiction is the number of mandatory ministerial decrees and guidelines the Decree defers to. As at the date of this questionnaire, none has yet been issued.

The secondary legislation expected should cover:

- guidelines on "same work" and "work of equal value" 

- pay gap data collection and reporting including  the format and methodology for gender pay gap reporting, needed for employers' first reports.

- monitoring body.