Eurostat: Of EU countries that have minimum wages, Bulgaria continues to have the lowest
Of the 22 out of 27 European Union countries that have national minimum wages, January 2025 found Bulgaria continued to have the lowest, according to figures released on April 10 by EU statistics agency Eurostat.
In January 2025, ten EU countries had minimum wages below 1000 euro month: Bulgaria (551 euro), Hungary (707 euro), Latvia (740 euro), Romania (814 euro), Slovakia (816 euro), Czechia (826 euro), Estonia (886 euro), Malta (961 euro), Greece (968 euro) and Croatia (970 euro).
In six others, minimum wages ranged from 1000 to1500 euro a month: Cyprus (1000 euro), Portugal (1015 euro), Lithuania (1038 euro), Poland (1091 euro), Slovenia (1278 euro) and Spain (1381 euro).
In the remaining six, minimum wages were above 1500 a month: France (1802 euro), Belgium (2070 euro), Germany (2161 euro), the Netherlands (2193 euro), Ireland (2282 euro) and Luxembourg (2638 euro).
Bulgaria’s national minimum monthly wage has risen substantially over the years. In 2001, it was 44 euro, according to Eurostat figures. In 2005, twenty years ago, it was 77 euro.
In 2007, when Bulgaria joined the EU, it was 92 euro. Ten years ago, in 2015, it was 184 euro.
In 2020, it was 312 euro, rising to 332 in 2021 while remaining the same in 2022, before rising to 399 euro in 2023 and 477 euro in 2024.
These figures mean that from 2001 to 2025, the national minimum wage in Bulgaria has increased by about 1152.2 per cent.
Eurostat said that in 2025, when expressed in purchasing power standard (PPS), minimum wages in EU countries with lower price levels become higher compared with those with higher price levels.
After adjusting for price differences across countries, minimum wages ranged from 878 PPS per month in Estonia to 1992 PPS in Germany, meaning that the highest minimum wage was 2.3 times the lowest.
If measured in relative terms, as a proportion of the median earnings, in 2022, minimum wages represented more than 60 per cent of the median gross monthly earnings in three EU countries: France, Portugal and Slovenia (66 per cent in all countries), Eurostat said.
At the lower end of the distribution, minimum wages were less than half of the median earnings in four countries: Belgium (49 per cent), Malta (46 per cent), Estonia and Latvia (43 per cent in both countries).
(Photo: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)
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