In 2020 there were 21 out of 27 European Union member states with an official minimum wage set by the government.
In this article I've listed them all, also this is the first year I'm not including data for the UK in this table
Turns out this is already the seventh (#7) article about minimum wages in European Union featured on the blog.
| Gross 2020 | Gross 2019 | Change | Change % | ||
| 1 | Luxembourg | €2,142.00 | €2,071.00 | €71.00 | 3.31% |
| 2 | Netherlands | €1,636.00 | €1,615.00 | €21.00 | 1.28% |
| 3 | Ireland | €1,616.00 | €1,563.00 | €53.00 | 3.28% |
| 4 | Belgium | €1,594.00 | €1,563.00 | €31.00 | 1.94% |
| 5 | Germany | €1,584.00 | €1,599.00 | -€15.00 | -0.95% |
| 6 | France | €1,539.00 | €1,521.00 | €18.00 | 1.17% |
| 7 | Spain | €1,108.00 | €1,050.00 | €58.00 | 5.23% |
| 8 | Slovenia | €941.00 | €886.00 | €55.00 | 5.84% |
| 9 | Malta | €777.00 | €747.00 | €30.00 | 3.86% |
| 10 | Greece | €758.00 | €758.00 | €0.00 | 0.00% |
| 11 | Portugal | €741.00 | €700.00 | €41.00 | 5.53% |
| 12 | Poland | €611.00 | €524.00 | €87.00 | 14.24% |
| 13 | Lithuania | €607.00 | €555.00 | €52.00 | 8.57% |
| 14 | Estonia | €584.00 | €540.00 | €44.00 | 7.53% |
| 15 | Slovakia | €580.00 | €520.00 | €60.00 | 10.34% |
| 16 | Czech Republic | €575.00 | €514.00 | €61.00 | 10.61% |
| 17 | Croatia | €546.00 | €505.00 | €41.00 | 7.51% |
| 18 | Hungary | €487.00 | €464.00 | €23.00 | 4.72% |
| 19 | Romania | €466.00 | €449.00 | €17.00 | 3.65% |
| 20 | Latvia | €430.00 | €430.00 | €0.00 | 0.00% |
| 21 | Bulgaria | €312.00 | €286.00 | €26.00 | 8.33% |
| Average EU | €934.95 | €898.10 | €36.86 | 3.94% |
Data source: List of European countries by minimum wage
It should be noted: The calculations are based on the assumption of a 40-hour working week and a 52-week year, with the exceptions of France (35 hours), Belgium (38 hours), United Kingdom (38.1 hours), Ireland (39 hours), and Germany (39.1 hours). Most of the minimum wages are fixed at a monthly rate, but there are countries where the minimum wage is fixed at an hourly rate or weekly rate.
As it already happened for the previous years, there are no changes in the country with the highest and lowest minimum wage. Luxembourg as usual ranks #1 with more than EUR 2,000 gross minimum wage in 2020, while Bulgaria takes the last spot with minimum wage EUR 312 Making a gap between highest and lowest salary in European Union 6.63 times. That's huge, but shrinking (for 2018, the gap was 7.62 times)
Minimum wage map in European Union 2020
When visualizing data on the map, its' clearly visible that higher minimum wages are set in the Western European countries, despite the higher growth rates are found in Eastern European countries.