The government’s plan to only transpose part of the European Union’s Pay Transparency directive will not be enough to reduce Estonia’s gender pay gap, which is the highest in the EU, Equality Commissioner Christian Veske has said.
Last week, the Minister of Economic Affairs and Industry Erkki Keldo (Reform) said the directive would not be transposed into Estonian law because it creates too much additional work for businesses.
He said Estonia would rather pay a fine from the EU than create more bureaucracy for businesses. The government wants the deadline pushed back by two years to 2028.
On Wednesday, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said some clauses will be adopted.
Estonia has the highest gender pay gap in the European Union, ranging from 13 to over 18 percent depending on the statistics cited.
Veske said the directive is causing problems in other countries as well and, to his knowledge, no country has implemented it yet. At the same time, he noted that some countries plan to go beyond the minimum requirements.
“One example is Lithuania. Others are more traditional countries where these issues have already been addressed for a long time, such as Finland and Denmark. They already have strong systems in place, so for them the directive only means adopting certain elements,” he told ERR’s online broadcast “Otse uudistemajast.”
The commissioner said the directive would create additional work for institutions and companies, but said it is necessary for both employers and employees.
The government is now planning to introduce legislation to ban applicants from having to disclose their previous salary, as well as an obligation for employers to disclose the salary range before an interview.
Veske said these are cosmetic changes. “The fact that no one may be discriminated against or paid less because of their gender has long already been written into our Gender Equality Act,” he said.
The government’s proposals do not solve the fundamental concerns, the commissioner said.
“The important thing is that a culture develops in which institutions have to disclose and report these things regarding the gender pay gap. I think this is necessary in a broader sense to ensure a wider understanding of what the gender pay gap is and how widespread it is in Estonia. We do get a very general description of the problem from Eurostat regarding its overall level, but it is not possible to draw conclusions from that about the situation within a specific institution,” Veske said.
He added that employers can find more detailed information about the pay gap in the salary mirror application of Statistics Estonia, which allows users to view wages by occupation.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications has developed an artificial intelligence-based prototype to help evaluate jobs based on job descriptions, Veske noted. The suggestion that everyone would have to be paid the same is incorrect.
“There simply have to be objective reasons why you pay someone more. For example, if you have two different types of legal advisers or lawyers and one group is scarcer on the labor market, making them more expensive, then you can justify paying them more,” Veske said.
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