Last updated: 11 August 2026
The key headlinefor this update is: the proposed new Danish rules are not yet part of the current Danish Equal Pay Act (ligelønsloven). On 26 February 2026, the Danish Ministry of Employment and Gender Equality sent a draft bill amending the Equal Pay Act out for external consultation. The consultation deadline was 27 March 2026, and the draft proposes the new rules take effect on 1 January 2027.
In practice, this means there's a good case for starting preparations now, but the specific Danish requirements and dates should still be treated as proposed, not final, until the Danish legislative process is complete.
The EU adopted Directive (EU) 2023/970 in May 2023. Member states were required to transpose it into national law by 7 June 2026 at the latest.
In Denmark, there is a consultation draft to amend the Equal Pay Act. The draft introduces a number of new obligations for employers and proposes an effective date of 1 January 2027 — later than the EU deadline.
So it's worth being clear about the difference between three things: the equal pay rules already in force, the requirements set out in the EU directive, and the specific Danish provisions proposed in the consultation draft.
The consultation draft proposes greater pay transparency from the recruitment stage onwards.
Under the draft, candidates would be entitled to information about the starting salary, or the salary range, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria. If a relevant collective agreement applies to the role, candidates would also be entitled to information about that.
This doesn't necessarily mean the salary range has to appear in the job advert itself. The key point is that candidates receive the relevant information so pay negotiations can happen on an informed, transparent basis.
The draft also proposes that employers would no longer be allowed to ask candidates about their pay history in current or previous roles.
For HR teams, this means it may be worth reviewing job postings, recruitment processes and interview guides.
A central element of the consultation draft concerns employers' pay structures.
Under the proposal, pay structures would need to make it possible to assess whether employees are in a comparable situation in terms of the value of their work. The criteria would have to be objective and gender-neutral, covering factors such as skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions, among others.
The draft also proposes that every employer should make it easy for employees to access the objective, gender-neutral criteria used to determine pay, pay levels and pay progression.
This makes it worth checking whether your company's existing pay principles are sufficiently clear and can be properly documented.
If you need to assess whether your current pay structure, job architecture or pay processes are ready for the requirements expected to come into force, Azets can help you get a clear picture of your starting point and the areas worth working on.
Under the consultation draft, an employee would be able to request information about their own individual pay level, as well as the average pay levels, broken down by gender, for the category of employees performing the same work or work of equal value.
Employers would be required to inform employees about this right once a year, and about how to access the information.
Where a specific request is made, the draft proposes that the information must be provided in writing within two months. Employees would also be able to request further, reasonable clarification if the information provided is imprecise or incomplete.
Where disclosure would directly or indirectly reveal an identifiable employee's pay, the information should not be shared. Instead, the draft states that information would be shared with the employee representative or, failing that, with the new Institute for Equal Pay.
DISCO codes — Denmark's national system for classifying occupations, similar in principle to the international ISCO standard — can be relevant, but they don't necessarily solve the whole task on their own.
The consultation draft defines a category of employees based on those performing the same work or work of equal value. That categorisation has to be carried out in a non-arbitrary way, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria.
This means an existing job classification using DISCO codes doesn't, by itself, document which jobs are of equal value. Businesses may therefore want to look at job content, responsibility, competence requirements and other relevant criteria as well.
The consultation draft proposes different reporting deadlines depending on company size.
For the group with 50–99 employees, the draft sets out specific conditions. Among other things, there must be at least eight employees of each gender within the same employee group, as determined by the six-digit DISCO code or an equivalent classification system. The draft also proposes an exemption for the agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing sectors.
So it isn't accurate to assume that every company with 50–99 employees would automatically be covered by the same reporting requirements.
For employers with at least 100 employees, the consultation draft includes rules on a joint pay assessment.
A gap of at least 5% between the average pay levels of female and male employees within a given employee category doesn't, on its own, mean the company has breached the equal pay rules.
Under the draft, a joint pay assessment becomes relevant once several conditions are met. Among other things, the gap must be unjustified based on objective, gender-neutral criteria, and the company must not have corrected the gap within the proposed deadline.
The purpose of the assessment is, among other things, to analyse the pay gaps and identify measures where the gaps can't be objectively and neutrally justified.
Even though the specific Danish rules haven't been finally adopted, it can be worthwhile getting an overview of the areas the consultation draft targets.
Businesses can, among other things, look more closely at their pay structure, job architecture, criteria for setting and progressing pay, the quality of their pay and HR data, and existing recruitment procedures.
A good starting point is to check whether your business can explain and document why employees in comparable roles are paid differently. It may also be worth assessing whether pay principles are applied consistently across the organisation.
How much preparation you need will depend on factors such as your company's size, pay structure, HR data and existing processes.
Azets can help you assess your current setup and get an overview of the areas that may need adjusting once the final Danish legislation is in place.
We're following the Danish legislative process closely and will update this article as the final rules take shape.
Contact us
