From 1 November, Greek pay transparency law applies to every private employer from the first hire.
Law 5316/2026 writes the EU Pay Transparency Directive into Greek law, and it takes effect on 1 November 2026 without a transition period. A company with fewer than a hundred employees escapes the gender pay gap report and nothing else. Under fifty, it may also keep its pay progression criteria to itself, though the law does not say how the fifty are counted.
What remains fits in five steps. Start by writing down how you set pay, with every role assessed on the four criteria the law names: skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions. A tidy spreadsheet is enough. Candidates must learn the starting pay or range before the interview, and no one may ask what they earn now, which means checking the application form and briefing the recruiter. The criteria have to sit somewhere every employee can find them. Anyone who asks gets a written answer within two months, with their own pay and the average for women and men doing the same work or work of equal value, and everyone hears once a year that they can ask. Each answer needs a check before it leaves. If a team has one woman, the women’s average is her salary, and the comparison then goes only to employee representatives, the Labour Inspectorate or the Ombudsman.
Pay covers base salary plus every allowance, bonus, overtime payment and benefit in kind, and differences often hide in the bonuses and benefits. Nor is the 5% figure people quote a permitted gap. It applies only from a hundred employees up, so in a small firm a smaller difference is still unlawful if it follows sex and no objective criterion explains it.
Until a ministerial decision sets a specific penalty, fines follow the Labour Code’s general range of €300 to €50,000 per breach. Compensation to the employee is uncapped, and an employer who skipped the transparency duties carries the burden of proving it did not discriminate.
Our guide, in Greek, has a job ad, a pre-interview email and a reply letter ready to copy: download the guide (PDF, 1.3 MB).