German Companies Face Pay?Data Deadline as Courts Tighten Transparency Requests
04.07.2026 - 05:07:05 | boerse-global.de
With the European Union’s pay?transparency directive (2023/970) looming, German employers are racing to archive salary figures – even as recent court rulings show that individual requests for equal?pay information can be refused under strict conditions. The directive, which Berlin missed transposing by the 7 June 2026 deadline, is now set for a national law revision early next year.
Under the new rules, workers gain a written right to learn both their own and the average pay within their salary group. Firms with more than 100 employees must submit reports on the gender pay gap in phases from 2027 and from 2031. If a wage gap of at least five percent emerges, a joint pay assessment with the works council becomes mandatory. Experts urge companies to systematically record compensation data from January 2026 onward, since those periods will likely feed into the first mandatory reports.
Courts Define When Requests Cross the Line
A recent ruling by the Amtsgericht Arnsberg on 1 July 2026 (file number 42 C 434/23) illustrates the limits of the current right to information. The court rejected a customer’s data?access request against the optics firm Brillen Rottler as excessive and also denied any claim for damages. According to the judges, the plaintiff had voluntarily provided his data and then, just nine days later, filed a sweeping request under Article 15 of the GDPR – without first lodging a complaint with the supervisory authority. The decision follows a landmark judgment of the European Court of Justice on 19 March 2026 (C?526/24), which stated that even a first request can be deemed excessive if the data controller proves an abusive intent. Indicators include publicly known patterns of systematic requests. Moreover, for a damages claim an actual loss must be shown; a mere hypothetical risk of data misuse is insufficient.
The Six?Person Rule Blocks Pay?Comparison Demands
The same restrictive line applies to pay?transparency requests under Germany’s Entgelttransparenzgesetz. The Landesarbeitsgericht Köln, on 5 February 2026 (file 6 SLa 121/25), dismissed a saleswoman’s lawsuit seeking information about male colleagues’ salaries. Her claim failed because the law requires the comparison group to contain at least six people of the opposite gender. In this instance the group consisted of only five male colleagues. The court also noted that different levels of responsibility and travel burden can prevent a role from being classified as equal work, so employers are not obliged to provide information when job profiles lack sufficient overlap.
Despite these restrictive individual rulings, the overall compliance burden is rising. Some companies are turning to automation: the German startup CompLens markets an AI?based platform that conducts pay?gap analyses and job evaluations.
Broader Transparency Reforms on the Way
Parallel to the pay?directive implementation, the federal government plans to amend the Informationsfreiheitsgesetz (IFG). The goal is to focus access rights on natural persons with a legitimate interest while better protecting civil servants by blacking out their names in disclosures. Critics from politics and civil society warn that this could curb transparency and hamper press work. In Saxony, a parliamentary faction recently lost a case before the Verfassungsgerichtshof after filing a wide?ranging data?protection query to the state government; the court found that the effort involved would have unacceptably impaired the administration’s ability to function.
With the 2027 deadline approaching, German businesses face a dual challenge: they must meet stricter EU?mandated reporting thresholds while navigating a domestic legal landscape that tightly limits individual information rights.
