Malta put the EU Pay Transparency Directive into law with Legal Notice 173 of 2026, the Equal Pay (Transparency and Reporting) Regulations, 2026, published on 5 June 2026. The regulations apply to every employer in Malta, public and private, and to every worker with an employment relationship under the Employment and Industrial Relations Act. Parts of them apply to job applicants too.

Most of the text follows the Directive closely. Three things are stricter, and they’re the ones an employer meets first: an eight-day deadline to answer a pay request, a clear escalation path that ends in a criminal offence, and fines set in euro.

Before you hire

Regulation 4 gives applicants the right to know the starting pay or its range for the role, and any collective agreement that applies, before the recruitment process ends. The range has to rest on objective, gender-neutral criteria. You can’t ask an applicant what they earn now or earned before. Job adverts and job titles have to be gender-neutral.

Decide the band for each role before you advertise it, and put the range in the advert or the first conversation.

Written pay policy

Regulation 5 asks every employer to keep written criteria for how pay, pay levels and pay progression are set, and to make them available to workers at all times. Employers with fewer than 50 workers don’t need written progression criteria, but from 25 workers you still document internally how pay is set. Below 25, the principle of equal pay for work of equal value still applies in full.

The criteria in regulation 3(3) are the Directive’s four: skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions, applied in a gender-neutral way and taking soft skills into account. Where employees’ representatives exist, the criteria are agreed with them.

Pay requests: eight days to answer

This is where Malta departs most from the Directive. Under regulation 6, any worker can ask in writing for their own pay level and the average pay levels of women and men in the same work or work of equal value. The Directive allows up to two months to answer. Malta allows eight days.

If the answer doesn’t come:

Day 8. The employer’s deadline to answer in writing, under regulation 6(2).
Within 12 more days. An employees’ representative, or the worker’s chosen union, can make the same request on the worker’s behalf, under regulation 6(3)(a).
Then the Equality Body. If the employer still doesn’t answer, the worker can get the information through the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality, under regulation 6(3)(b).
Day 45. If the information still hasn’t been provided, or it’s inaccurate or incomplete, 45 days after the first request, that failure is an offence under the Act, and the Director can start proceedings, under regulation 6(5).

Requests made in 2026 cover 2026 pay only (regulation 6(1)). Every year, you have to tell all workers they have this right and how to use it (regulation 6(6)). Keep the data behind each answer for at least five years (regulation 6(8)).

Eight days isn’t long enough to build a category of workers, pull pay data and work out averages from scratch. The answer has to be close to ready before the request arrives.

Gap report dates by headcount

Regulation 9 follows the Directive’s thresholds and spells out the first reporting periods:

Workers	First report due	Covers	Then
250 or more	7 June 2027	Calendar year 2026	Every year
150 to 249	7 June 2027	Calendar year 2026	Every three years (next covers 2029)
100 to 149	7 June 2031	Calendar year 2030	Every three years (next covers 2033)
Fewer than 100	Voluntary

The report holds the seven indicators of Article 9 of the Directive: the mean and median gender pay gap, the same gaps in bonuses and other variable pay, the share of women and men who receive variable pay, the share of women and men in each pay quartile, and the gap in each category of workers, split into basic and variable pay.

Management confirms the report is accurate after consulting employees’ representatives, who can see the method used (regulation 9(7)). The full report goes to the Monitoring Body, the Department for Industrial and Employment Relations (regulation 9(8)). The gap by category of workers goes to every worker and to the representatives (regulation 9(9)). Regulation 9(5) adds that reports are submitted within 14 working days from the end of a relevant yearly period.

The 5% rule and the joint pay assessment

If the report shows a gap of 5% or more between women and men in any category of workers, you can’t justify it on objective, gender-neutral grounds, and you haven’t fixed it within six months of submitting the report, you run a joint pay assessment with your employees’ representatives (regulation 10). Within ten working days of finishing it, you send it to the Monitoring Body.

We cover what the assessment contains, and how to avoid needing one, in The 5% rule and joint pay assessments.

Burden of proof

Under regulation 15, once a worker shows facts that suggest pay discrimination, the employer has to prove there wasn’t any. If you didn’t meet your transparency duties under regulations 4, 5, 6, 9 and 10, that weighs against you. Claims for lost pay and compensation can be brought within three years.

Fines

Regulation 20 sets the penalties. A breach of the regulations carries a fine of €2,500 to €5,000 on conviction. Where the breach is, or is connected with, a breach of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value, the fine is €5,000 to €7,000. Repeat infringements draw a more severe penalty within those limits. These sit on top of lost pay and compensation awarded by the Industrial Tribunal.

What to do now

Count your workers and find your reporting date in the table above.
Group roles into categories of workers doing the same work or work of equal value, using the four criteria. See Job evaluation without Hay.
Set a pay band per grade, and use it in every job advert.
Write down how pay and progression are set, and make it available to workers.
Send the yearly notice of the right to pay information.
Be ready to answer a pay request in eight days, with the person’s pay and the averages for their category on a full-time basis.
Run your gap report early, on 2026 data, so a 5% gap has time to be explained or closed before it counts.

Squadra HR does steps 2 to 7 from the records you already keep. The EU pay transparency guide maps every duty to what the product does, and the pay transparency module shows the screens.

Sources

L.N. 173 of 2026, Equal Pay (Transparency and Reporting) Regulations, 2026, legislation.mt
Directive (EU) 2023/970, EUR-Lex

What Malta's L.N. 173 of 2026 means for employers