The gender pay gap in the European Union won’t be eliminated until the next century at the current pace of change, shows research of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).

Eurostat data shows that “the EU gender pay gap has closed by 1% over the last eight years, which means women will be waiting for another 84 years to achieve equal pay if current trends continue,” ETUC warned in a press release on Monday.

In 2010 the gender pay gap in the EU was 15.8% and in 2018 it was 14.8%.

Without binding measures for equal pays, the pay gap will continue to increase in nine EU member states.

Women in another nine EU member states will have to wait until the second half of the next century to have pays equal to their male colleagues.

Women in Germany and the Czech Republic could wait until 2121 to have equal pays, “while the gap is closing so slowly in France (0.1% since 2010) that it is on course to take over 1000 years to achieve equality.”

In Germany in 2018 the pay gap was 20.9% (compared to 22.3% in 2010) while in it was 20.1% (compared to 21.6% in 2010) in Czechia.

The pay gap in France in 2018 was 15.5% whereas in 2010 it was 15.6%.

In Croatia the pay gap between men and women in 2018 was 10.5% compared to 5.7% in 2010 and it is still rising, ETUC notes.

The pay gap will be eliminated by the end of this decade without any additional measures in just three countries – Belgium, Luxembourg and Romania, adding that wages in Romania are unacceptably low in any case.

ETUC is concerned that in those circumstances the European Commission has delayed the publication of its pay transparency directive.

The directive was to have been published on November 4 (Equal Pay Day) however this has been postponed until December 15.