Cyprus Labour Ministry to submit pay transparency and minimum wage bills to Parliament by year-end

Cyprus’s Ministry of Labour and Social Insurance is preparing three changes to labour legislation by the end of the year. The bill on pay transparency is expected to go to the Council of Ministers as early as September, the law on an adequate minimum wage will be submitted to Parliament by the end of 2026, and an action plan to expand collective bargaining will be ready by November. Labour Minister Marinos Mysiouttas said this in response to questions from MPs.

The bill on pay transparency transposes EU Directive 2023/970 on equal pay for men and women into Cypriot law. The document has passed a tripartite technical committee involving the employers’ organisations OEB and KEVE and the trade unions SEK, PEO and DEOK, while the public consultation ran from 4 November to 5 December 2025. Employers will have to report the gender pay gap for the first time by 6 June 2027.

The second bill concerns an adequate minimum wage and harmonises Cypriot rules with EU Directive 2022/2041. The document is currently undergoing a second technical review by the Republic’s Law Office, after which it will be submitted to the Council of Ministers and then to Parliament. The minister attributed the delay partly to proceedings at the Court of Justice of the EU: Denmark has challenged the directive’s legal basis. Cyprus already has a 2022 law on the minimum wage.

The third item is an action plan on collective bargaining. At present, collective agreements cover around 40% of workers, while Cyprus has no law making sectoral agreements mandatory for all employers in a given sector. Agreements are in force in the hotel sector, construction, woodworking, banking and ports. The plan is to be completed by November 2026 and sent to the European Commission.

The ministry is also preparing the technical infrastructure: the €52,117.32 eValueJobs project was completed in June 2026, while a €1.1 million support programme runs until December 2027. Employers will use it to submit pay gap data.