Pay Equity Romania

Basic Summary

Romania recognizes the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value through the Labour Code and gender equality legislation, reinforced by EU law. Employers must ensure gender-neutral pay practices and respond to discrimination claims before the National Council for Combating Discrimination (CNCD) and the courts. While Romania has not yet fully transposed the EU Pay Transparency Directive, material new transparency and reporting obligations will apply once implemented, including rights for employees to obtain pay information and mandatory gender pay gap reporting for larger employers.

For Total Rewards and Payroll teams, compliance hinges on rigorous data governance, robust comparison group design, and transparent, documented pay-setting criteria. Pay must be assessed across all remuneration components, cash and in-kind. Employers should prepare for EU-driven requirements ahead of the national transposition deadline by establishing internal reporting, remediation workflows, and governance aligned to the Directive's 5% unexplained gap trigger for joint pay assessments.

Summary

Equal pay obligations in Romania apply to all employers regardless of size, prohibiting gender-based pay discrimination for equal work or work of equal value. Enforcement is driven by the Labour Inspectorate (Inspecția Muncii) for labour code breaches, CNCD for discrimination, and civil courts. CNCD may impose administrative fines and order corrective measures; courts can award damages, back pay, and reinstate rights. Employers rely on objective, gender-neutral factors such as job complexity, qualifications, experience, performance, and working conditions to justify pay differentials. Confidentiality clauses cannot be used to prevent employees from pursuing equal pay claims or discussing pay with authorities or representatives.

Directive (EU) 2023/970 on Pay Transparency will reshape practice once transposed by Romania (deadline: 7 June 2026). Key elements include pay range transparency in job ads or before interview, bans on pay history questions, rights to request information on individual pay level and average pay levels by category of workers, and mandatory public reporting on gender pay gaps for larger employers with a phased cadence. Where an average pay gap of at least 5% is identified within a category of workers and cannot be justified by objective gender-neutral criteria, a joint pay assessment with employee representatives will be required. Employers benefit from preparing now: harmonized job architecture, documented pay frameworks, standardized data models, and statistically rigorous monitoring to detect and correct unjustified disparities.

Legal Framework

Primary national legislation

• Labour Code (Law no. 53/2003, as republished and amended): establishes the right to equal pay for equal work or work of equal value; sets wage components; regulates working time, overtime, and information obligations in employment contracts.
• Law no. 202/2002 on equal opportunities and treatment for women and men (republished, as amended): codifies gender equality principles, defines discrimination, and supports enforcement of equal pay for equal work/equal value.
• Government Ordinance (OG) no. 137/2000 on preventing and sanctioning all forms of discrimination (as amended): general anti-discrimination law enforced by CNCD; covers direct and indirect discrimination in employment, including pay.
• Government Decision (HG) no. 905/2017 on the General Register of Employees (REVISAL): mandates registration and transmission of employment data, including salary elements, to the Labour Inspectorate.
• Law no. 190/2018 implementing GDPR in Romania: sets national rules supplementing GDPR including processing of national identification numbers (CNP) and security measures.

Related compensation/benefits legal instruments

• Law no. 165/2018 on value tickets (bilete de valoare): regulates meal, gift, childcare, and cultural vouchers and their tax/benefit treatment.
• Government Emergency Ordinance (OUG) no. 8/2009 on holiday vouchers: governs vacation vouchers and tax treatment.

EU legal framework

• Directive (EU) 2023/970 of 10 May 2023 to strengthen the application of the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value through pay transparency and enforcement mechanisms (Pay Transparency Directive): transposition deadline 7 June 2026; introduces pay range transparency, ban on pay history, right to information, mandatory reporting for 100+ employees (phased), 5% unexplained gap trigger for joint pay assessment, and strengthened remedies, sanctions, and burden of proof.
• Directive 2006/54/EC (recast Equal Treatment Directive): general framework on equal treatment of men and women in employment and occupation, including equal pay.
• Directive (EU) 2019/1152 on transparent and predictable working conditions: complements transparency in employment terms (indirectly relevant to pay communication).

Selected CJEU case law underpinning methodology

• Case C-109/88 Danfoss: establishes that where a pay system is opaque and a gender pay gap exists, the burden shifts to the employer to prove non-discrimination.
• Case C-127/92 Enderby: different pay rates for comparable work require objective justification; statistical disparities can evidence discrimination even across different bargaining units.

Regulatory bodies

• Labour Inspectorate (Inspecția Muncii) and territorial labour inspectorates: monitor compliance with labour law, including wages, working time, REVISAL.
• National Council for Combating Discrimination (CNCD): investigates discrimination, issues decisions, imposes fines, and orders remedial measures.
• National Agency for Equal Opportunities between Women and Men (ANES): policy coordination and guidance on gender equality.
• Romanian Data Protection Authority (ANSPDCP): supervises GDPR compliance.

Penalties and remedies

• CNCD fines: typically up to 30,000 RON for discrimination against an individual and up to 100,000 RON for discrimination against a group or community, alongside corrective measures.
• Labour Inspectorate contraventions: administrative fines for breaches of the Labour Code (including wage records, REVISAL obligations, and certain pay practices), plus corrective orders.
• Civil remedies: back pay, damages (including moral damages), interest, and court-mandated changes to policies/practices.

Status and pending changes (as of November 2025)

Romania has not yet published final national legislation transposing Directive (EU) 2023/970. Employers should anticipate: pay range disclosures in hiring, prohibition of pay history inquiries, employee rights to receive pay information by category of workers, reporting for 100+ employers with phased timelines, and joint pay assessments when discrepancies ≥5% persist without objective justification.

Detailed Data Requirements

Key Data Fields

Field/Data	Description and Romanian/EU considerations
Unique Employee ID (pseudonymous)	An internal, non-identifying key. Avoid CNP in analytic datasets; CNP is highly sensitive under Law 190/2018 and requires enhanced security if processed.
Legal Entity / Employer Registration	Full legal name and CUI. Multi-entity Romanian groups should segment analyses by entity and consolidate where relevant.
Work Location	City/county, country, remote/hybrid status. Geographic differentials must be objectively defined and consistently applied.
Job Title (local)	Contracted title per employment agreement (Art. 17 Labour Code).
Global Job Family	Harmonized family for cross-entity comparability (e.g., Finance, Engineering, Sales).
Job Level/Grade	Formal grade/level used for pay ranges/job architecture; required to evaluate work of equal value.
Employment Type	Permanent, fixed-term, temporary agency worker, apprenticeship/internship; include contractor flag if assessed separately.
Standard Weekly Hours	Contracted hours; Romania full-time typically 40 hours/week; document deviations (e.g., 37.5).
FTE Factor	Standardized to 1.0 for full-time; part-time = contracted hours / standard full-time hours.
Base Salary (contractual)	Gross base per month; Romania commonly uses monthly gross. Capture effective dates for changes; ensure REVISAL alignment.
Annualized Base Salary	Base x 12 (or x 13 if guaranteed 13th month is contractual); state assumption explicitly.
Protected Characteristic: Sex/Gender	Binary "female/male" for statutory analysis; separate field for non-binary where collected. Under GDPR, "sex" is not special category data; handle sensitively.

Step-by-Step Calculation Methodology

1. Data Standardization

Establish a single source of truth for employee, job, and pay data spanning the complete reference period (e.g., prior fiscal year), reconciling HRIS, payroll, commission, and equity systems. Use a controlled data model aligning to the EU definition of ''pay'': any consideration, whether in cash or in kind, which the worker receives directly or indirectly, in respect of employment.

Normalize currency to RON, applying a consistent, auditable FX policy (e.g., monthly average National Bank of Romania rates) and disclose methodology. For multi-country comparisons, retain both local currency and RON columns.

2. FTE Adjustments

Convert all employees to a comparable ''per-FTE'' basis for pay rate comparisons while retaining gross actuals for reporting. For base salary comparisons, use ABS_perFTE = ABS / FTE. For hourly analyses, normalize to gross hourly pay using paid hours as the denominator.

Example: An employee at 0.6 FTE with a monthly gross base of 4,200 RON has ABS = 50,400 RON; ABS_perFTE = 84,000 RON. For hourly pay, if monthly contracted hours are 168, hourly base ≈ 4,200 / 168 = 25 RON/hour.

3. Total Compensation Calculations

Define the core metric for testing. Commonly:

• Unadjusted Gap metric: Gross Hourly Pay (EU-comparable) for organization-level and category-of-workers statistics.
• Adjusted Gap metric: TCC_perFTE or ABS_perFTE for regression analysis to isolate rate-of-pay differences.

Include in "pay": base, overtime, shift/weekend/night premiums, allowances functioning as remuneration, commissions, bonuses, profit share, cash LTI, taxable benefits in kind, realized equity benefits.

4. Comparison Group Formation

Form ''categories of workers'' consistent with Directive (EU) 2023/970 and Romanian law on equal value: groups of workers performing the same work or work of equal value based on objective criteria: skills, effort, responsibility, and working conditions.

Primary grouping options:

• Same Job Code within the same Location and Grade
• Job Family + Grade + Location combinations where sample sizes allow
• Job Evaluation Score bands (e.g., Hay point ranges) by Location

Minimum sample sizes: target n ≥ 10 per sex for descriptive gaps and n ≥ 30 total observations for regression.

5. Statistical Testing

Organization-level unadjusted gaps (EU-style):

• Mean gap (%): 100 x (Mean_male − Mean_female) / Mean_male based on Gross Hourly Pay
• Median gap (%): 100 x (Median_male − Median_female) / Median_male
• Pay quartiles: compute distribution quartiles for all workers; report proportion of women and men in each quartile

Within-category analysis and adjusted gaps: Run OLS log-linear regressions on ln(TCC_perFTE) or ln(ABS_perFTE). Core controls: grade/level (fixed effects), job family, location, tenure, time-in-role, contract type, performance rating (lagged), education/qualifications, and relevant experience.

6. Gap Analysis

Integrate unadjusted and adjusted findings. Prioritize remediation where:

• Unadjusted gaps are large and persistent (e.g., ≥5–10% at enterprise level or within senior grades)
• Adjusted gaps indicate a statistically significant, unexplained shortfall for one sex
• Representation skews in top pay quartiles compound pay gaps (glass ceiling effects)

Justifiable Differences

Legally acceptable, gender-neutral criteria

(must be job-related, consistently applied, and documented)

• Measurable performance differentials based on validated ratings or objective targets
• Experience and tenure relevant to the role
• Education, licenses, and professional certifications genuinely required
• Job complexity and responsibility differences evidenced by grade/level, job evaluation points
• Working conditions and schedule premiums (night/holiday/weekend work, hazardous environments)
• Geographic location adjustments based on documented labor market differentials
• Scarce skills or market retention premiums tied to external benchmarks

Documentation and burden of proof

Under OG 137/2000 and EU jurisprudence (e.g., Danfoss), once an employee presents facts suggesting discrimination (including statistics), the burden shifts to the employer to prove that pay differences are based on objective, gender-neutral factors.

Maintain contemporaneous documentation: pay policies, job evaluation results, hiring and promotion rationales, performance calibration minutes, market data sources, and compensation committee decisions.

Non-justifiable reasons

(risk of unlawful discrimination)

• Prior salary or pay history of candidates; the Pay Transparency Directive bans pay history questions post-transposition
• ''Negotiation skill'' without objective, structured offer guidelines and controls against bias
• Manager discretion lacking documented, consistently applied criteria
• Career breaks for pregnancy, maternity, parental leave, or caregiving as negative factors
• Subjective cultural ''fit'', age stereotypes, or assumptions about availability or mobility
• Confidentiality clauses used to suppress lawful pay transparency or reporting rights

Reporting Requirements

Current national obligations (as of November 2025)

• No statutory, nationwide gender pay gap public reporting mandate is in force yet in Romania
• Employment and pay element registration via REVISAL under HG 905/2017 remains mandatory

Forthcoming EU Pay Transparency Directive obligations

(post-transposition)

• Pay range transparency: salary range or initial pay must be provided in job postings or prior to interview
• Ban on pay history inquiries: employers may not ask applicants about current or past compensation
• Right to information: workers will have the right to request written information on their individual pay level and the average pay levels, broken down by sex
• Gender pay gap reporting: employers will report pay gaps by sex across their workforce and by categories of workers

Expected cadence:

• ≥250 employees: annual reporting

• 150–249 employees: reporting every three years initially

• 100–149 employees: reporting every three years starting later in the phased schedule

• Joint pay assessment: where the average pay difference is ≥5% within a category of workers, persists for at least six months, and cannot be justified by objective gender-neutral factors

Indicative timelines

• EU transposition deadline: 7 June 2026
• First reporting for ≥250 employers is generally expected within one year after transposition
• Phased timelines thereafter for 150–249 and 100–149 cohorts

Remediation Framework

Triggering conditions

Statistically significant adjusted pay gaps adverse to women or men within a comparison group; or unadjusted average differences ≥5% that persist and lack objective justification, aligning with the Directive's joint assessment trigger.

Investigation procedures

Case-file each flagged comparator group with descriptive statistics, regression outputs, and documentation of applied pay policies. Interview managers to understand historical decisions; verify performance, job content, and market allowances against policy.

Correction timelines

Implement salary adjustments in the next feasible payroll cycle, or as part of annual merit, prioritizing those furthest below peers. Where directed by authorities or a joint pay assessment, adopt corrective measures within the agreed timeline (often within 6–12 months).

Retroactive payments

Where unlawful pay discrimination is established by CNCD or courts, back pay and damages may be owed, typically subject to limitation periods under labour and civil law.

Joint pay assessment

(post-transposition) Conducted with employee representatives where the ≥5% unexplained gap condition is met and persists; the assessment sets corrective actions, deadlines, and monitoring.

Ongoing monitoring

Quarterly pulse checks on new hires' starting pay, promotion pay outcomes, and incentive payouts; semi-annual regression-based audits; annual executive review with budgeted remediation fund.

Compliance Calendar

Compliance item	Scope	Reference period/deadline	Notes
Internal annual pay equity audit	All Romanian employing entities	Annually, aligned to fiscal year	Feed results into merit planning
Starting pay governance review	Romania hiring	Quarterly	Check offer range adherence
Variable pay equity check	Incentive-eligible populations	After bonus/commission payouts (Q1)	Analyze payout distributions by sex
Representation by pay quartile report	All employees	Annually	Required for EU-style reporting
EU Pay Transparency reporting	Employers ≥100 workers	As set by national law	Publication and submission to authorities
Board/Executive review of pay equity	Group-wide	Annually (post-audit)	Approve remediation budget

GDPR and Data Management

Lawful bases under GDPR for pay equity processing rely primarily on legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c)) to comply with equal pay rules and on legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)) to prevent discrimination and ensure fair remuneration.

Special category data (Article 9) should be minimized. ''Sex'' is not a special category; however, intersectional analyses involving racial/ethnic origin, health, or union membership require a valid Article 9 ground and robust safeguards.

Romanian Law 190/2018 imposes heightened safeguards for processing national identification numbers (CNP). Exclude CNP from analytic datasets; if unavoidable, apply strict access controls, encryption, and logging.

Key GDPR principles for pay equity

• Data minimization: collect only fields necessary to assess equal pay
• Purpose limitation: use data only for pay equity assessment
• Pseudonymization: separate identifiers from analysis datasets
• Employee rights: transparency notices, access, rectification, restriction
• Retention: align with labour, fiscal, and archiving rules
• Security: role-based access, encryption, audit logging

Useful Resources

• Labour Code (Law no. 53/2003): https://legislatie.just.ro/Public/DetaliiDocument/307935
• Law no. 202/2002 on equal opportunities: https://legislatie.just.ro
• Government Ordinance no. 137/2000 (CNCD): https://www.cncd.ro
• REVISAL portal: https://revisal.inspectiamuncii.ro
• Labour Inspectorate: https://www.inspectiamuncii.ro
• ANES: https://anes.gov.ro
• Romanian Data Protection Authority: https://www.dataprotection.ro
• EU Pay Transparency Directive: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2023/970/oj

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Important Disclaimer: This guide is based on information available as of November 2025 and is subject to change. The content provided does not constitute legal advice and is for informational purposes only. Total Rewards professionals should seek qualified legal counsel and local employment law expertise before making decisions or taking actions based on this guidance.