ELA EU Pay Directive
LATVIA

Legislation Addressing the EU Pay Directive
Succinct summary of the legislation:
The Ministry of Welfare has drafted a Pay Transparency Act (Darba samaksas pārredzamības likums) to transpose Directive (EU) 2023/970 into Latvian law. The draft is currently with the Cabinet of Ministers, where progress stalled in April 2026. It has not yet been approved or submitted to the Saeima (Parliament).
Latvia has therefore missed the 7 June 2026 transposition deadline. According to information published on the Cabinet of Ministers website, the draft Act is expected to be submitted to the Saeima for consideration shortly. No confirmed date for adoption has been announced.
The draft Act covers all key areas of the Directive: pre-employment pay transparency (pay range disclosure in job advertisements, prohibition on salary history enquiries, gender-neutral job titles); employer obligations to make pay criteria and pay progression criteria accessible to workers; individual worker rights to request pay information; gender pay gap reporting obligations (applicable to employers with 100 or more workers); joint pay assessments; data protection; worker remedies and burden of proof rules; and administrative sanctions enforced by the State Labour Inspectorate. The Cabinet of Ministers is required to issue secondary regulations on the gender pay gap reporting procedure by 1 May 2027. No secondary legislation has been published to date.
Draft legislation implementation:
The draft legislation broadly follows the Directive without significant gold-plating. No specific indication has been given by the legislature that the final enacted version will deviate materially from the Directive's requirements.
Application
Recruitment and job applicants
What information must an employer provide to job applicants in relation to pay (i.e. what does "initial pay range" include – basic pay, bonus, family leave payments, pension, stock options, etc)?
Article 32(3) of the Labour Act (Darba likums) provides that a job advertisement must state, inter alia, the range of the total gross monthly or annual salary, or the expected hourly rate, for the relevant position. The law uses two distinct concepts. "Darba samaksa" (remuneration) is defined in Section 59 as the regularly paid remuneration for work, which includes the salary (darba alga) and any supplements prescribed by law, collective agreement, or employment contract, as well as bonuses and any other form of remuneration related to work. The statutory wording therefore uses salary (darba alga) rather than the broader remuneration (darba samaksa). The mandatory disclosure covers the gross salary range or hourly rate — not, expressly, bonuses, stock options, pension contributions, or family leave payments as separate line items.
How and when must this information be provided?
In the job advertisement itself. The obligation arises at the advertisement stage: Article 32(3) requires the salary range to be included in the employer's public announcement of a vacancy.
Does the salary history ban apply equally to internal candidates?
No explicit salary history ban according to the current regulation. The Labour Act does not contain an express prohibition on asking applicants (external or internal) about their salary history. Article 33(2) prohibits questions in a job interview that are unrelated to the performance of the intended work or the applicant's suitability for it, as well as questions that are directly or indirectly discriminatory
Can employers' use salary history information already known to them when determining salaries for internal hires/ promotions?
The Labour Act contains no provision expressly prohibiting an employer from taking into account salary history information that it already holds when setting pay for internal candidates. The key constraint is the equal pay obligation: Article 60(1) requires employers to set equal remuneration for men and women for the same work or work of equal value.
Does local law require that the job vacancy notices and job titles are gender neutral?
Job vacancy notices — Yes, explicitly. Article 32(1) provides that a job advertisement must not be addressed exclusively to men or exclusively to women, unless belonging to a particular gender constitutes an objective and justified requirement for the performance of the work in question, and such requirement is proportionate to a legitimate aim.
Job titles. The statute does not contain a freestanding requirement to use gender-neutral job titles as such. Latvian is a grammatically gendered language and therefore provides both masculine and feminine forms of occupational titles; however, there is no statutory requirement to use a single gender-neutral form.
Transparency of pay and pay progression policy
Individual rights to pay information
A worker is entitled to request and receive information on:
- their individual pay level; and
- the average pay levels broken down by sex for workers performing the same work as them or work of equal value to theirs
Prohibitions on workers disclosing pay information
Contractual clauses that prevent employees from disclosing information about their pay are prohibited under the Directive.
Gender pay gap reporting
National Workforce Thresholds
Dealing with Gaps & Joint Pay Assessments
Data Protection
Breach of pay transparency and pay gap reporting requirements
Rights to equal pay – rights of action
Workers Representatives
Member State Support
Other/Additional

