Romania has the fourth lowest minimum wage in the European Union
Articol de Bogdan Isopescu, 15 Aprilie 2025, 16:51
Romania has the fourth lowest minimum wage in the European Union, equivalent to €814.
At the bottom are Bulgaria, Hungary and Latvia, while Ireland and Luxembourg top the table, the latter with more than €2.600.
22 out of 27 EU countries have national minimum wage laws. The exceptions are Denmark, Italy, Austria, Austria, Finland and Sweden.
Of the 22, 10 are below €1.000, including Bulgaria, with the lowest minimum wage - €551, followed by Hungary, Latvia and Romania, with €814 a month. Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Estonia, Malta, Greece and Croatia are next. Another six countries have between €1.000 and €1.500 a month, and here we have Cyprus, Portugal, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia and Spain.
France follows with €1.800 a month, then the remaining five countries have over €2.000. These are Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and Luxembourg, the last of which has a minimum wage of €2.638, which is 4.8 times more than the lowest minimum wage in Bulgaria.
However, a comparison with the prices in these countries shows that the differences in minimum wages between European countries are decreasing.
Thus, after adjusting for price differences between countries, minimum wages ranged from 878 PPS per month in Estonia to 1.992 PPS in Germany, which means that the highest minimum wage was not five times higher, but only 2.3 times higher than the last one in the scale.
Translated by: Radu Matei
