Bulgaria's minimum wage: CITUB puts the cost of living at 828 euros net a month

How minimum wages are set, and what role living costs should play, was the subject of the international conference "Bargaining-Up: Together for a Fair Deal for Workers", organised by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) in Sofia on Tuesday. Labour Minister Nataliya Efremova said, according to the BTA news agency, that recent amendments to the Labour Code had created a new mechanism that deliberately avoids an automatic formula and preserves the role of social dialogue. Living costs are to be taken into account, but the methodology is still being developed.

Plamen Dimitrov, head of the CITUB trade union confederation, criticised the lack of an official cost-of-living methodology in Bulgaria. "We have a methodology for the small consumer basket, but there is no specific methodology for the cost of living," BTA quoted him as saying. He said the current minimum wage of 620 euros falls below the threshold CITUB estimates at 828 euros net a month for a single worker. Dimitrov called for the 2027 minimum wage to reach the upper end of the range under discussion. Atanas Katsarchev of the Podkrepa union described Bulgaria's minimum wage as the lowest in Europe and the Balkans.

Also on Tuesday, the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional amendments to the Labour Code that had been introduced through the 2026 State Budget Act. They concerned the "freezing" of the minimum wage and the calculation of length of service. The court found they lacked a direct link to the budget's revenues and expenditures. The court's statement does not say what concrete effect the ruling has on the level of the minimum wage. At the conference, Tea Jarc of the ETUC pointed to Slovenia as a positive example because it updates its minimum wage frequently.