On 24 June 2026, Senior Associate Krista Ellul of David Zahra & Associates Advocates joined Maria Bartolo Zahra of SurgeAdvisory to deliver a webinar on the Equal Pay (Transparency and Reporting) Regulations, 2026, introduced by Legal Notice 173 of 2026.
The regulations transpose the EU Pay Transparency Directive into Maltese law and mark one of the most significant changes to local employment law in recent years. The session set out what the regulations mean in practice, and what organisations need to have in place before the compliance deadlines start to bite.
Krista Ellul opened with the legal framework: how the Directive sits alongside existing Maltese law, including the Equality for Men and Women Act and the Employment and Industrial Relations Act, and what is genuinely new. Key obligations covered included the ban on asking candidates about pay history, the requirement for gender-neutral job titles and categorisation systems, workers’ right to request their own pay level and the average pay of comparable colleagues, and Malta’s own escalation mechanism: an 8-day response window for employers, rising to a criminal offence if information still hasn’t been provided after 45 days.
The reporting obligations were also set out in detail. Organisations with 250 or more employees must report annually from 7 June 2027. Those with 150 to 249 employees report every three years, also from 2027. Organisations with 100 to 149 employees join the reporting regime from 2031. A gender pay gap of more than 5% in any category, left unexplained and unaddressed for six months, triggers a joint pay assessment with employee representatives.
Maria Bartolo Zahra followed with the practical side: how organisations actually get ready. The advice centred on four steps that build on each other. Job descriptions come first, since nothing else works without an accurate, gender-neutral picture of what each role does. Job evaluation follows, giving roles a defensible, objective value using the four factors the regulations require: skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions. Pay structures come third, translating evaluation scores into documented salary bands with clear, gender-neutral progression criteria. Communication and training close the loop, since managers are now expected to explain pay decisions and most currently have neither the training nor the tools to do so.
A worked example from a fictional hospitality group illustrated the point. A 12% pay gap between two supervisor roles, one predominantly male and one predominantly female, had no documented basis, and had simply gone unquestioned. Scoring both roles against the same objective criteria showed they were of equal value. The fix, once the gap was visible, was targeted and contained rather than sweeping.
The regulations are now in force, and the first compliance deadlines are closer than they appear. Organisations that start with job descriptions and evaluation now will find the rest of the framework, from pay structures to reporting, considerably easier to build.
SurgeAdvisory and David Zahra & Associates Advocates work together on the legal and HR sides of pay transparency compliance. Should your organisation require assistance in understanding or implementing these new requirements, our team would be pleased to assist.
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