04 February, 2015

By VIVA Team

The minimum wage in Spain is one of the lowest in Western Europe

The Council of Europe has called on Spain to increase its official minimum wage, calling the current level ‘insufficient’ to maintain a decent standard of living in the country…

Currently, the minimum wage in Spain is €648.60 a month, making it the second-lowest official minimum wage in Western Europe, ahead of Portugal where the minimum wage is €565.83 per month for a typical, 40-hour a week working contract.

Spain actually increased its minimum wage at the beginning of 2015, but the increase amounted to just €3.30 per month – or a 0.5 per cent rise. This increase came after a freeze in 2014 and, although it is a step in the right direction, the Council of Europe says Spain is failing to meet the obligations set out in the European Social Charter, which recommends that a country’s minimum wage is 60 per cent of its average wage.

In Spain, the average annual salary is €22,726 according to Spanish national statistics agency, INE. Hence, if the country were to increase its minimum wage to meet the 60 per cent guideline, the monthly wage would increase from €648 to just over €900 per month – bringing Spain in line with Italy (where the minimum wage is set at €880 per month), but still some way below France’s €1,430 monthly minimum wage before tax.

Although the Council of Europe has no law-making powers within the EU or Spain, its recommendations have received the backing of Spain’s increasingly influential unions, which have been lobbying the government for an increase on the minimum wage, which currently amounts to €9,079 per year.

“Spain’s minimum wage for workers in the private sector does not secure a decent standard of living,” said a Council of Europe spokesperson. Currently, around 200,000 full-time Spanish workers earn the minimum wage, and in 2013 figures revealed that 12 out of every 100 Spanish workers were stuck in minimum wage jobs.

Although Spain remains one of the cheapest countries in which to live in Western Europe, these incomes are ‘unjust’, said the Council of Europe, and has urged ministers to abide by the 60 per cent rule.

With a general election looming, this issue could become a hot topic in the coming weeks and months.