Pay Transparency Is Rewriting the Executive Offer. Italy Moved First.

The board is ready to make the offer. The negotiation playbook it plans to use is no longer legal in the candidate's country.

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The EU pay transparency directive changes how a senior offer is built in two concrete ways. Employers must give candidates the starting pay or pay range for the role before the interview, and they can no longer ask what a candidate earns today or earned in the past. The deadline for Member States to transpose Directive (EU) 2023/970 passed on June 7, 2026. Italy's rules are already in force. Most other countries are still drafting.

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Picture a board in Munich preparing an offer for a CFO candidate based in Milan. The process is familiar: find out the current package, add a premium, negotiate the gap, close. Since June 7, the first step of that process is prohibited in Italy, and the prohibition explicitly covers questions asked indirectly, including through a search firm. The board has not changed anything. The law around its candidate has.

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That is the real shift in pay transparency executive hiring. The same senior role can now fall under different rules depending on where the candidate sits and where the job is based. This article looks at where the rules apply today, what replaces the salary history conversation, how pay ranges and internal equity work at senior level, and how to run one search across several EU countries. It is leadership guidance, not legal advice.

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Where the EU Pay Transparency Directive Applies Today, and Where It Doesn't Yet

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The European Commission has closed the door on delay. In May 2026 it confirmed it does not intend to include the Directive in any simplification package or "stop-the-clock" measure, calling it essential to equal pay between men and women. Infringement procedures against late Member States are widely expected.

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Compliance on the ground is uneven. According to the Ius Laboris transposition tracker, updated in early October 2026, only a handful of countries have full national laws in force, among them Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia and Greece. Poland and Estonia have partial measures covering parts of the hiring stage. Spain published a draft Royal Decree in August. The Netherlands has scheduled its parliamentary debate for January 2027. France aims for a final vote before the spring 2027 presidential election. Germany has not yet started its formal legislative process.

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Italy moved early and with intent. Legislative Decree No. 96 of May 7, 2026 was published on June 1 and entered into force on June 7, the day of the EU deadline. On the hiring side, it goes one step beyond the Directive's minimum: the starting pay or pay range must appear in the job notice itself, not simply be shared before interview, together with a reference to the applicable national collective agreement. The ban on salary history questions extends to information gathered indirectly, including through recruiters.

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For a company hiring senior leaders across Europe, the practical consequence is simple. The rulebook is not one rulebook. It changes by country, and in several countries it will change again within the next twelve months.

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Does the EU Pay Transparency Directive Apply to Executive Roles?

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Yes. The Directive contains no carve-out for senior or executive positions. Its individual rights, including access to pay information before interview and the ban on pay history questions, apply largely regardless of company size.

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The definition of pay is also broader than many boards assume. The Directive covers base salary and any complementary or variable components, in cash or in kind. For an executive package, that means bonus structures, long-term incentives, company cars and pension contributions all sit inside the frame. Italy's decree adds a nuance: its definition of "pay level" excludes components that are personal, discretionary or temporary and not generally available to the same category of employees. That distinction will matter in how senior packages are documented.

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The reporting obligations add pressure from inside the organization. Employers with 150 or more workers file their first gender pay gap reports by June 2027, on 2026 data. Employers with 100 to 149 workers follow from 2031. Where reporting shows an unexplained gap of 5% or more in any category of workers, the employer has six months to close it or must run a joint pay assessment with employee representatives. The Directive also shifts the burden of proof onto the employer when an employee brings an equal pay claim.

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Senior roles are often the most bespoke packages in a company. That is precisely why they are the most exposed. A negotiated exception that once stayed between the CEO and the candidate now has to hold up against documented, gender-neutral criteria.

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The End of Salary History Questions, and What Replaces Them

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For decades the anchor of executive negotiation has been the candidate's current package. It was quick, it felt objective, and it gave both sides a starting number. The Directive removes that anchor because it carries past pay inequities forward into new contracts.

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What replaces it is not guesswork. It is a different set of inputs, and they demand more preparation on the employer's side.

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The value of the role. The offer starts from what the position is worth in that market, at that level of complexity, not from what the person was paid elsewhere. This requires a market view of the role before the search begins.

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Internal equity. The offer has to sit coherently against the pay of people doing work of equal value inside the company. That comparison is no longer private, because employees gain the right to request average pay levels for comparable roles, broken down by gender.

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The candidate's expectations. Asking what a candidate expects is different from asking what they earn. The conversation moves from "what do you make" to "what would make this move right for you," which is often the more useful question at senior level anyway.

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What the candidate leaves behind. Buyouts of unvested incentives remain a real part of senior moves. How that information is gathered and documented without crossing into pay history is a gray area, and one where local legal advice is worth having before the offer stage.

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The intermediary question deserves attention. Italy's decree explicitly closes the indirect route through recruiters. A search firm cannot become the channel that collects what the employer is no longer allowed to ask.

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Pay Ranges and Internal Equity at Senior Level

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Many C-suite searches are confidential and never produce a public job advertisement. The obligation does not disappear. The candidate is still entitled to the starting pay or range before the interview, and in Italy the information must accompany the vacancy notice through which the opportunity is communicated.

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The temptation will be to publish a range so wide it says nothing. Commentary on the Italian decree notes that the text leaves employers considerable discretion on width. At senior level, though, a meaningless range carries its own cost. It signals that the company has not decided what the role is worth, and experienced candidates read that immediately.

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The internal consequences matter even more. Eurostat puts the unadjusted gender pay gap in the EU at 12% in 2023, and women held 35.2% of managerial positions in 2024. Every senior hire made outside the band becomes visible to the people already inside it. A new commercial director hired well above an incumbent of equal scope is no longer a quiet exception. It is a data point that employees can ask about and that the annual report may surface.

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The discipline this requires is front-loaded. Define the band before the search opens. Decide in advance which elements are negotiable, such as variable pay, sign-on terms or relocation, and on what documented criteria. Then hold the line. As we explored in our analysis of building a C-suite for cross-border operations, defining what "right" looks like before the search starts is what separates mandates that succeed from those that unravel after the offer.

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How to Run One Hiring Process Across Several EU Countries

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Most senior searches in Europe now draw candidates from more than one country. A country manager for Italy may come from Spain, France or Switzerland. A group CFO may be hired in Milan to work with a board in Germany. The rules generally follow the place of employment, but a cross-border mandate puts several regimes in play at once, and each needs local review.

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Three principles keep the process coherent.

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Build to the highest common standard. Disclose the range before interview in every country, not only where the law already requires it. Stop asking about pay history everywhere. A single process that already meets the strictest regime is cheaper than country-specific versions that break as each national law lands.

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Plan for the law that will apply at closing, not at kickoff. A search launched this quarter for a role in France or the Netherlands may close into a different legal regime than the one it started in. The offer design should anticipate that.

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Respect the local reference points. In Italy, the job notice must reference the applicable national collective agreement, which for senior executives typically means the agreement covering dirigenti. What counts as a credible range in Milan differs from Munich or Madrid. Getting this wrong is not only a compliance issue. It shapes whether the offer is taken seriously.

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The cultural layer does not disappear either. How directly pay is discussed, when it is raised and by whom varies across markets, a point we developed in getting cross-cultural executive placement right. The Directive standardizes the minimum. It does not standardize the conversation.

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The Most Common Mistake: Assuming Your Country's Delay Protects You

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The most frequent error we see is a quiet assumption: if our home country has not transposed the Directive yet, the rules do not affect our hiring. That assumption fails in at least three ways.

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First, the rules attach to where the role is based. A German group hiring a country manager in Milan is hiring under Italian law, whatever the status in Berlin. The same applies in Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia, Greece, and in the countries with partial measures already in force.

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Second, delay is temporary. The Commission has ruled out extensions, and the major economies still drafting are moving toward adoption in late 2026 or 2027. Offers signed today will sit inside those future frameworks, and the first pay gap reports will be based on 2026 data that companies are generating right now.

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Third, the exposure is not only legal. Senior candidates across Europe are increasingly aware of what employers can and cannot ask. A board that opens with a salary history question in a country where it is prohibited does not just take a legal risk. It tells a strong candidate something about how the company operates.

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This is why the executive offer has become a matter of local knowledge as much as budget. At Future Manager World, the cross-border searches that close well are the ones where the range, the reference points and the negotiation approach are built for the market where the leader will actually work, from the first brief.

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Key Takeaways

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• Directive (EU) 2023/970 requires employers to disclose starting pay or a range before interview and bans questions about current or past pay, with no exemption for executive roles.
• Italy's Legislative Decree 96/2026 has been in force since June 7, 2026, and goes beyond the Directive by requiring pay information in the job notice itself and extending the ban to recruiters.
• Transposition is uneven: a handful of countries have full laws in force, while Germany, France, Spain and the Netherlands are still drafting, with adoption expected in late 2026 or 2027.
• Without salary history as an anchor, senior offers must be built on the value of the role, internal equity and the candidate's expectations, with the pay band defined before the search opens.
• Your home country's delay does not protect hiring elsewhere: the rules follow the place of employment, and the Commission has ruled out any extension.

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Future Manager World works with CEOs, CHROs, and boards hiring senior leaders across Europe. Talk to our team.