No, the pay transparency directive is based on a prohibition: employers no longer ask a job applicant about their current salary or salary at a previous employer. This applies not only to direct questions in conversations, but also to indirect approaches such as a CV field where the last salary is mandatory, or a question through a recruitment agency that inquires on your behalf.
The prohibition does not only affect the question itself. Also actively using salary data that you happen to already have — for example from an earlier process with the same candidate — does not align with the intention of the rule. The thinking behind it is that an offer based on what someone earned before maintains existing differences rather than breaking them down. This is why the salary range in the job posting and the prohibition on the salary question are mentioned in the same breath: one provides guidance, the other prevents the conversation from still revolving around the old salary.
What counts as asking about current salary
The literal question "what do you earn now" is the clearest case, but practice knows more variants. Asking for a salary indication as part of an online application form, a reference check that also covers compensation, or a recruiter who wants to "get a sense" of what someone is used to — these are all forms of the same question, just packaged differently. For the assessment, it makes little difference whether the question is asked by you directly or by an external agency that recruits on your behalf; your responsibility for the recruitment procedure does not change because a third party conducts the conversation.
What does matter is the distinction between current or previous salary on the one hand, and the candidate's salary expectations for this position on the other. Asking what someone expects to earn for this role is a different conversation than asking what someone currently earns. Most HR teams can make this distinction, but it does require that application forms and interview guides are deliberately reviewed for it — a standard field "current salary" that has been in the format for years, for example, often falls under this.
Why this stands apart from the number of employees
Unlike the reporting obligation, which only applies from one hundred employees onwards, the prohibition on the salary question is among the obligations without a threshold. This means that an installation company with eight employees is just as subject to it as an organization with three hundred. The same applies to the salary range that must be in the job posting and the requirement that selection criteria are formulated in a gender-neutral manner. These three points directly affect the recruitment procedure, and it is precisely there that the risk of unintended deviation is greatest, because job posting texts and application forms are often reused unchanged for years.
Whether a specific question, a form field, or an interview setup fits within the rule depends on the precise wording and the context of the position. This cannot be captured in one general statement, and the final interpretation per Member State is still not fixed in some respects. For your own situation, this is something to check with a lawyer or, for the exact text of the directive, on EUR-Lex.
What you can review now
For most SMEs, this is mainly a matter of updating existing formats: the application form, the question list for the interview, and the instructions to an external recruitment agency if you work with one. Anyone who wants to see how this relates to the other obligations that already apply, without a threshold for the number of employees, will find an overview in the knowledge base per topic.
Because the salary question, the salary range in the job posting, and the gender-neutral criteria often come together in the same text, it is practical to also view a concrete job posting in relation to these elements. The vacancy check reviews a text against these points and provides an indication, free of charge and without an account. For the next step — the job classification and remuneration policy that should underpin the job advertisement — read more on the page with explanation of how payria works.
Do you need a complete picture of what already applies to your organisation and what does not yet, including the step towards one hundred employees and the reporting obligation that comes with it? The free compliance check provides that overview in a few minutes, and on the page with the subscriptions you can see what changes as soon as you also need the implementation and the templates.