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Good practice Imported

Portugal's Equal Pay Enforcement Under Law 60/2018 — ACT Notify-and-Correct System

Portugal · Lisbon · See the Portugal profile · See the Lisbon profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 42% 74/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Under Law 60/2018, Portugal's labour authority (ACT) reviews annual company pay data and formally notifies employers with unjustified gender pay gaps of 5%+; in early 2025 it notified about 1,540 employers, ~20% of the ~7,700 covered firms.

~1,540 (~20% of ~7,700 covered firms)
Employers notified for unjustified pay gaps (early 2025)
13.3%
Portugal national gender pay gap (2023)
Portugal's Equal Pay Enforcement Under Law 60/2018 — ACT Notify-and-Correct System

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Autoridade para as Condições do Trabalho (ACT) & CITE
Period
2018–ongoing
Keywords
labour inspection, wage equality enforcement, public administration

Context

Portugal's Law 60/2018 requires employers with 50+ staff to submit employee-level pay data by gender as part of their annual 'Relatório Único'; the Authority for Working Conditions (ACT) analyses this centrally and formally notifies employers with an unjustified pay gap of 5% or more, who then have 120 business days to justify or correct it.

Results

In early 2025, ACT notified approximately 1,540 employers — about 20% of Portugal's roughly 7,700 covered companies — for unjustified pay disparities of 5% or more; Portugal's overall gender pay gap stood at 13.3% in 2023, and the model is now informing Portugal's transposition of the EU Pay Transparency Directive due by June 2026.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
ACT labour inspectors and data analysts, CITE coordination staff

Conditions for success

  • centrally analysing mandatory annual pay data rather than relying on employer self-assessment
  • a 120-business-day window for employers to justify or correct gaps, backed by sanctions and public-procurement exclusion

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes CERV — Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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