Minimum wages in Europe range from 213 euros in Albania to as much as 2,142 euros in rich Luxembourg, according to Eurostat data for January 2020. Just how do Croatian salaries rank?
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 10th of February, 2020, the minimum wage is legally prescribed in most European Union member states and in some other non-EU European countries, the Buka Magazin portal reports.
In countries where the minimum wage is not legally prescribed, a calculation is made according to the usual number of working hours per month.
Recent data show that the differences in the minimum wages across European countries are very large, and there are some much lower than average Croatian salaries, which are typically the subject of a great deal of discussion.
The European Union has also recognised the problem of the large difference in the minimum wage, and the European Commission launched a consultation on European minimum wages in mid-January to examine in the next few weeks whether to propose a new regulation to address this issue at the EU level.
According to Eurostat, in eight European countriesm the minimum wage exceeds a comfortable one thousand euros. Lagging behind as usual, typical minimum Croatian salaries are around 500 euros.
Luxembourg, on the other hand, has a minimum wage of 2,142 euros is followed by Ireland with a minimum wage of 1,656 euros, the Netherlands with 1,636 euros, the United Kingdom with 1,599 euros, Belgium with 1,594 euros, Germany with 1,584 euros, France with 1,539 euros and Spain with 1,050 euros.
Then follow 10 European countries in which the minimum wage is somewhere between 500 and 1,000 euros.
Namely, the minimum wage in Slovenia is 941 euros, in Malta 777 euros, Greece 758 euros, Portugal 741 euros, Poland 611 euros, Lithuania 607 euros, Estonia 584 euros, Slovakia 580 euros, the Czech Republic 575 euros and in Croatia, 546 euros.
At the very bottom of the list with a minimum wage of less than 500 euros, there are a total of seven European countries, namely Hungary with 487 euros, Romania with 466 euros, Lithuania with 430 euros, Serbia with 343 euros, Montenegro with 331 euros, Bulgaria with 312 euros and Albania with a discouraging 213 euros.
According to Eurostat, the minimum wage in Luxembourg, by far the highest in Europe, is an incredible ten times higher than in Albania.
Luxembourg has been firmly at the top of the list of European countries for years in terms of minimum wages. In this small country with a population of about 602,000, the minimum wage back in 2015 was 1,923 euros, and every year it grew regularly, until last year it exceeded the magical figure of two thousand for the very first time, more precisely, reaching 2,089 euros.
Of the EU member states, residents of Bulgaria, Romania and Latvia receive the lowest minimum wage.
Also interesting is the fact that the minimum wage in Luxembourg has increased by 219 euros in the last five years, which is higher than the current minimum wage in Albania of 213 euros.
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