Romania, unprepared for salary transparency: 75% of companies risk non-compliance within a few weeks

With just two months to go before the implementation deadline of the EU Pay Transparency Directive (June 7, 2026), most companies in Romania are not prepared for the new requirements. According to a study conducted by Mirro on 150 companies across multiple industries, approximately 75% of organizations risk non-compliance. Read the full report here.

Although the topic is already on the public agenda, the actual level of preparedness remains low. The data shows a clear gap between the level of awareness and the actual execution capacity: only a quarter of companies in Romania say they clearly understand the implications of the directive, while the rest have a low level of operational understanding.

“Pay transparency is not just about reporting, but the organization’s ability to explain, based on data, why two people are paid differently, and this is difficult to do when remuneration and performance data are not connected,” said Simona Lăpușan, CEO & Founder of Mirro.

One of the main bottlenecks is the lack of organizational ownership: almost half of companies (49%) do not have a clear person responsible for implementing pay transparency requirements.

At the same time, many organizations do not yet have the necessary foundations to support the process imposed by the EU Directive. 60% of companies do not have well-defined pay structures, which makes it difficult to compare roles and analyze pay equity.

The biggest challenge, however, arises in the area of ​​justifying pay differences. The European Directive requires justifying pay differences with objective, gender-neutral criteria, not just reporting them. Although most companies can generate pay reports broken down by gender, 9 out of 10 cannot explain why there are pay differences between employees in similar roles.

Currently, according to data from the Mirro study, companies in Romania are not indifferent to the EU Directive, but they are largely unprepared. Without a coherent system that connects data, processes and decisions, the risk is not just of delay, but of non-compliance.

The directive provides sanctions for companies that do not comply with the new obligations, including fines and compensation payments to affected employees, transforming compliance from an operational exercise into a real business risk.

As the deadline approaches, the difference will not be made by what companies know about the directive, but by what they can demonstrate, with data, in practice.

About Mirro

Mirro is the infrastructure that supports organizations’ people-centric strategy, optimizing employee and company performance while simplifying HR operations. Mirro’s SaaS solution is being updated according to the EU directive to cover not just reporting, but also real organizational transformation. The platform covers the collection, aggregation, interpretation, monitoring and ongoing reporting of pay equity/gender pay gap data, but uniquely facilitates the explanation of pay differences due to objective factors, such as performance and job fit.