Can you ask what colleagues in Belgium earn? Not fully yet, despite the EU pay transparency law

The practical takeaway for employees in Belgium is simple: as of 30 June 2026, the EU’s pay transparency directive says workers should get stronger rights to salary information, but Belgian implementation remains the key step to watch. HLN reported that Belgium has asked for more time on the wet rond loontransparantie. Until Belgian rules are formally adopted and published, do not assume you can immediately demand a full salary table from your employer. What you should know now The EU law is not about publishing everyone’s payslip. It is about giving workers and job applicants usable information: salary ranges before interviews, objective criteria for pay progression, and a right to request average pay levels for comparable work, broken down by sex. In Dutch search terms, this is the issue behind “weten hoeveel collega gemiddeld verdienen” and “hoeveel collega gemiddeld verdient”. For expats and international staff in Belgium, the first practical distinction is between three situations. If you are applying for a job, the EU model expects employers to provide the initial pay or salary range before the interview or in the vacancy notice, and not ask about your salary history. If you already work for a Belgian employer, the directive gives a right to request your own pay level and average pay levels for workers doing the same work or work of equal value. If you work for a large employer, reporting duties will matter too: the biggest companies face regular gender pay gap reporting and a possible joint pay assessment if an unjustified gap exceeds 5%. Where to turn in Belgium This is not a commune or gemeente matter. Your municipality in Schaerbeek, Antwerp, Leuven, Ixelles or Liège will not process a pay transparency request. The relevant Belgian actors are federal: the FPS Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue (FOD Werkgelegenheid / SPF Emploi), the labour inspectorate known in Dutch as Toezicht op de Sociale Wetten and in French as Contrôle des lois sociales, and the Institute for the Equality of Women and Men (Instituut voor de gelijkheid van vrouwen en mannen / Institut pour l’égalité des femmes et des hommes). Language matters in practice. In Flanders, HR documents and workplace communications are often in Dutch. In Wallonia they are generally in French. Brussels employers may work in Dutch, French or English internally, but formal labour-law language can still follow Belgian linguistic rules. If you make a request, keep it precise and neutral: identify your role, department and the category of comparable work, and ask for the process under Belgian transposition of Directive (EU) 2023/970 once it is in force domestically. What Belgium already has Belgium is not starting from zero. The country already has long-standing equal-pay and anti-discrimination rules, social-balance reporting, collective bargaining structures and sector-level pay scales. Statbel reported that Belgium’s harmonised gender pay gap was 0.7% in 2023, far below the EU average of 12.0%, although Statbel also notes that other calculation methods produce a larger gap. That is one reason the Belgian debate is less about discovering a massive headline gap and more about whether workers can verify fairness inside individual employers. What not to expect Do not expect to receive individual names and salaries. The EU directive focuses on average pay levels for categories of workers, with data protection safeguards. Do not expect the same process in a ten-person start-up and a 2,000-person multinational. The directive is heavier for larger employers and lighter for organisations below 100 workers. Do not treat a pay transparency request as a general negotiation weapon; it is designed around equal pay for equal work or work of equal value. For jobseekers, the biggest everyday change may be salary ranges. International professionals in Brussels, Ghent, Antwerp and Leuven are used to vacancies saying “competitive salary”. The EU direction is toward clearer ranges earlier in recruitment, reducing the information gap between candidate and employer. The broader view Pay transparency is part of a wider European move from individual complaint-based equality law toward preventive compliance. The logic is that discrimination is hard to prove if workers cannot see pay structures. Employers counter that the rules add administrative work and may flatten legitimate differences linked to seniority, performance, scarcity of skills or sectoral bargaining. In Belgium, that debate meets a labour market already shaped by indexation, joint committees and collective agreements. What happens next Belgium’s reported request for a delay does not by itself rewrite EU law. The directive set 7 June 2026 as the transposition deadline. The next practical milestones are the Belgian government’s implementing text, guidance from FPS Employment, employer templates, union advice and any European Commission response if Belgium is late. For now, keep records of job ads, salary-range communications and written HR answers. The right question is not whether you can know exactly what every colleague earns. It is whether Belgium will soon give workers a usable way to check whether comparable work is being paid fairly.