Minimum wages across the EU ranged from €620 a month in Bulgaria to €2,704 in Luxembourg on 1 January 2026, according to the latest update from EURES and Eurostat.
Minimum wage is the lowest pay employers can legally offer for work, set through national laws or collective agreements, the EU jobs network said, cited by the European Commission on Thursday.
Twenty-two of the EU’s 27 countries have a national minimum wage, while Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy and Sweden rely on agreements between unions and employers.
Among the countries with minimum wages above €1,500 a month were France (€1,823), Belgium (€2,112), the Netherlands (€2,295), Germany (€2,343), Ireland (€2,391) and Luxembourg (€2,704).
At the lower end, Bulgaria (€620), Latvia (€780), Romania (€795), Hungary (€838), Estonia (€886), Slovakia (€915), Czechia (€924) and Malta (€994) all recorded minimum wages below €1,500.
Countries with minimum wages between €1,000 and €1,500 included Greece (€1,027), Croatia (€1,050), Portugal (€1,073), Cyprus (€1,088), Poland (€1,139), Lithuania (€1,153), Slovenia (€1,278) and Spain (€1,381).
What the numbers do — and don’t — show
The headline amounts do not show how far pay stretches in daily life because prices, taxes, housing and service costs vary widely between countries, Eurostat noted.
It publishes “purchasing power” figures that adjust wages against an EU-wide average price level to show how much goods and services people can typically buy.
Poland’s monthly minimum wage of €1,139 has a purchasing-power value of about €1,500, meaning it can buy roughly the same basket of essentials as €1,500 would in higher-cost countries such as Germany or France.
