Must a salary be included in my job posting?

Not yet mandatory, but a salary range will be required soon

At present, there is no requirement in the Netherlands to include a salary or salary range in a job posting — this obligation does not yet exist for private employers. The legislative proposal that will regulate this, the Act implementing the Directive on pay transparency between men and women, was submitted to the House of Representatives on 21 May 2026 and still needs to be discussed and adopted, and subsequently by the Senate as well. The cabinet is aiming for entry into force on 1 January 2027, but as long as the law has not been adopted, that date does not constitute an established fact.

Nevertheless, this is a subject where the answer can change in the short term. The Directive itself provides that a job applicant receives the starting salary or the salary range, and this must be provided before the job interview or otherwise in the job posting itself — the choice between these two moments is not fixed. Nor may an applicant be asked about their current or previous salary. For most private employers, this does not yet have direct effect, because the Directive has no direct effect between employer and employee as long as the Dutch law does not exist. For employers in the public and semi-public sector, the situation is different: for them the Directive can already have direct effect, and judges have been obliged since the deadline for implementation passed to interpret existing law in light of the Directive as much as possible.

Basis: Article 5(1) and the status of the legislative proposal

The requirement that the salary range or starting salary must be communicated to applicants follows from Article 5(1) of Directive (EU) 2023/970; the prohibition on asking about salary history is set out in Article 5(2) of the same Directive. The fact that this does not yet apply to Dutch private employers follows from the status of the legislative proposal before the House of Representatives: still under consideration, with 1 January 2027 as a target date and not as an established entry date.