site.btaTrade Unions Claim EUR 605 Minimum Wage Proposal Falls Short of Legal Standards

The minimum wage in Bulgaria will be EUR 605 per month instead of the expected EUR 620, trade unions said on Wednesday. The lower level has been written down in the state budget bill for 2026, when Bulgaria is set to adopt the euro as its national currency on January 1. The minimum wage ought to be approximately EUR 620, based on a formula adopted by the National Assembly at the end of 2022, said Lyuboslav Kostov, Chief Economist of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB), speaking to journalists on Wednesday.

Kostov noted that the monthly difference of EUR 15 between the two rates translates to EUR 180 less per year for each worker earning the minimum wage.

According to him, if the proposed minimum wage for next year remains at EUR 605, this would be in violation of the law. “We discussed something different at the National Council for Tripartite Cooperation,” Kostov said. He added that the Minister of Labour and Social Policy had followed the provision in the Labour Code and submitted a draft decree in accordance with the legal text.

“The correct term is that the government is reducing the minimum wage,” Kostov said.

“What we see in the already published figures is that there is, in fact, a retreat and a violation of the commitment that was accepted three years ago in Parliament, when the Labour Code was amended to define the minimum wage as 50% of the average wage over the previous 12 months,” CITUB President Plamen Dimitrov commented. According to him, there has been no effective dialogue between the government, the trade unions, and employers regarding the draft budget.

On October 23, Finance Minister Temenuzhka Petkova announced that the draft budget would be presented by the end of the month.