Country guide
Pay transparency in Portugal
What the EU Pay Transparency Directive means for employers in Portugal, based on its national transposition — status, thresholds, the joint-assessment trigger, and where to file.
Portugal missed the 7 June 2026 deadline. A draft transposition law (projeto de proposta de lei, Council-of-Ministers stage) was published 5 August 2026 (Boletim do Trabalho e Emprego, Separata n.º 26/2026); its 20-day public consultation closed 25 August 2026 and no post-consultation revised text has been published. The GOVERNMENT's bill has not been tabled in the Assembleia da República — confirmed against the Assembleia's own initiative register on 2026-09-03, where no Proposta de Lei in the XVII legislature matches "remunerat" or "igualdade" against a control of 103 tabled, and no initiative of any type matches "60/2018" or "transparência salarial". This is NOT a claim that pay transparency is absent from the Assembleia: opposition bills exist, one of them naming transparência salarial in its title. The draft amends Lei n.º 60/2018, CITE's organic law (Decreto-Lei n.º 78/2026, which has superseded the DL 76/2012 that Lei 60/2018 art. 16 amended) and the Código de PROCESSO do Trabalho — not the Código do Trabalho. Its reporting scope floor is 50 employees — stricter than the Directive's 100 — phased in: 250+ annually and 150–249 triennially from 7 June 2027 (Art. 4.º-C(1)-(2), 18.º(5)-(6)); 50–149 triennially from 7 June 2031 (Art. 18.º(7)). Publication is STATE-RUN: a not-yet-named "entidade responsável pelo tratamento de dados" publishes national/regional/sectoral and per-employer disparity data (Art. 5.º-B), not the employer's own website. Lei n.º 60/2018 remains in force in the meantime, and its Article 5 duty binds 250+ employers since 21 February 2019 and 50+ since 21 February 2021. Draft is provisional pending formal tabling and enactment.
Portugal has a transposition bill in progress but has not yet enacted it. The figures below reflect the directive's defaults and the draft as it stands, and may change before the law is final.
Portugal sets reporting duties by employer size; the table below lists each band as the law states it. The directive's 5% trigger for a joint pay assessment applies until national law sets its own.
Figures are reported to the competent authority rather than published openly. Either way, the underlying work is the same: establish work of equal value through gender-neutral job evaluation, produce the statutory pay-gap report in the national format, and run a joint assessment where the gap is too wide.
Obligations at a glance
| Reporting threshold | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Laws in force |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Joint pay assessment | The directive's 5% trigger for a joint pay assessment applies until national law sets its own. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Public publication | Reported to the authority only | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Competent authority | Autoridade para as Condições do Trabalho (ACT) — the "serviço com competência inspetiva do ministério responsável pela área laboral" that receives the art. 32 return and issues the Lei 60/2018 art. 5.º plan notice; Comissão para a Igualdade no Trabalho e no Emprego (CITE) for binding pay-discrimination opinions and monitoring (arts. 6.º, 8.º); the August 2026 draft adds a not-yet-named data-processing entity that publishes disparity statistics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Frequently asked
Is the EU Pay Transparency Directive in force in Portugal?
Portugal has a transposition bill in progress but has not yet enacted it. The figures below reflect the directive's defaults and the draft as it stands, and may change before the law is final.
Which employers have to report in Portugal?
Portugal sets reporting duties by employer size; the table below lists each band as the law states it. 250 or more employees, from 2019.
What triggers a joint pay assessment in Portugal?
The directive's 5% trigger for a joint pay assessment applies until national law sets its own.
This guide summarises publicly available information for orientation only. It is not legal advice — confirm every figure against the national transposition text (Portugal) before relying on it.