Legislation transposing the EU Pay Transparency Directive (2023/970) was published in the Register of Legal Acts on May 25, 2026, and took effect June 7, 2026, with certain provisions to take effect at a later date. Although the legislation closely follows the directive's provisions, it introduces some deviations from, and additions to, the directive, the most notable being a centralized system for pay data collection and reporting, aimed at reducing administrative burdens for companies.
Lithuania's equal pay act: Governance framework
| Provision and timing | Lithuania | Alignment with the directive |
|---|---|---|
| Category of worker | Category of worker is defined as employees performing the same work or work of equal value, who are grouped by their employer according to objective gender-neutral criteria, including complexity, responsibility, effort and working conditions. Same work is defined as the performance of work activities that, according to objective criteria, are the same or so similar to other work activities that employees can be interchanged without the employer incurring higher costs as a result. Work of equal value means work that, when assessed based on objective and gender-neutral criteria, is considered to be of the same value as other comparable work. |
Aligned with the directive |
| Transparency prior to employment Compliance from: June 7, 2026 |
Employers will be prohibited from asking about an applicant's current salary or salary history and will be required to provide information about the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) applicable to the position, if any, before hiring. Note that companies are already required to include base salary or salary ranges in job advertisements. |
Aligned with the directive |
| Transparency on pay criteria Compliance from: December 31, 2026 |
Employers will be required to make information available to workers on criteria used to determine pay and benefit levels and pay progression (which must be objective and gender-neutral). The requirement on pay progression will not apply to organizations with fewer than 50 employees. | Aligned with the directive except for timing |
| Employee right to information Compliance from: January 1, 2027 (or as soon as employer data becomes available from Sodra) |
Employees will be entitled to information on their pay level relative to the average pay level of employees doing the same work or work of equal value, broken down by gender, which must be provided within one month. Employers will have to inform employees annually of their right to this information and the procedures to obtain it. Companies will be required to submit monthly data on pay, working time and job category to the Board for the State Social Insurance Fund (Sodra), which will then calculate average pay levels and provide results to employers, to be shared with employees exercising their right to information. |
Details differ from the directive on timing, involvement of Sodra in the data collection process and the 30-day window to respond to requests (compared with two months in the directive) |
| Gender pay gap reporting First compliance for data submission to Sodra by: January 1, 2027 First compliance for reporting by: April 1, 2028 |
Organizations with 100 or more employees will be required to report periodically on gender pay gaps by entity and by category of worker. Entities with 100 to 249 employees report every three years; those with 250 or more employees report annually. For category of worker pay gaps, Sodra will use data on pay, working time and job category provided by employers to calculate gender pay gap numbers for job groups and provide them to employers. For the first reporting, Sodra will first provide this data to employers with 150 or more employees by March 1, 2028, for employers to then report internally, and by March 1, 2031, for those with 100 to 149 employees. For entity pay gaps, Sodra will use the data provided to calculate and publish the gaps. First reporting is by April 1, 2028, for entities with 150 or more employees and by April 1, 2031, for those with 100 to 149 employees. |
Details differ from the directive on timing and the involvement of Sodra in the process |
| Pay gap assessments | Where gender pay gaps of 5% or more are identified at the category of worker level and cannot be justified on objective, gender-neutral grounds or corrected within six months, employers must conduct joint pay assessments in cooperation with employee representatives and develop an action plan to address the gaps. | Aligned with the directive |
| Remuneration system Compliance by: December 31, 2026 |
The employer must have a remuneration system established by CBA and applied to all employees or, in the absence of a CBA, a system approved by the employer and available to all employees. The remuneration system must divide jobs into groups based on objective and gender-neutral criteria. The remuneration system must set out the forms of remuneration by job group, taking into account objective and gender-neutral criteria, including the remuneration amounts or limits, the grounds, amounts and procedure for awarding bonuses, and the criteria and procedure for salary increases. |
Aligned with the directive except for timing |
| Other matters (including penalties) | Failure to comply with obligations may result in administrative fines. | Aligned with the directive |
The Minister of Social Security and Labor is expected to publish implementing regulations by July 31, 2026. Employers should prepare to meet the requirements introduced by the pay transparency legislation, including developing any databases to support compliance. Lithuania had an unadjusted gender pay gap of 10.0% in 2024, below the EU average of 11.1% (Eurostat data).
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