New Article: Statutory minimum wages in the EU 2016

Eurofound has published a new article on the statutory minimum wage levels in Europe. This article provides an overview of the minimum wage rates as of 1 January 2016, explains how they were set, and presents relevant discussions on minimum wages at national level.

The article shows that the level of minimum wage greatly varies among EU countries. Bulgaria and Romania have the lowest minimum wage in the EU, while Luxembourg has the highest minimum wage – about nine times the Bulgarian rate. Changes to the minimum wage also vary significantly between countries; between January 2015 and January 2016 the highest increases of the minimum wage (by more than 10%) took place in Bulgaria, Estonia and Lithuania, whereas in Belgium and Greece the minimum wage has remained unchanged since 2012.

There are also considerable differences in the way countries establish minimum wage levels. In ten countries, the government determined the minimum wage following a (non-binding) recommendation of a third party – often the social partners or a tripartite body. In nine countries, the wage was set unilaterally by the government. A fixed rule for the determination of the minimum wage was used in five countries. In several countries, these ways of determination were combined.

To read the article in full go to http://bit.ly/MinWageEU, the article can also be downloaded via the PDF document attached.