The Council of Ministers meets at 11:00 am under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the Maximou Mansion.
The new, sixth increase in the minimum wage from 2022 will be proposed at the Cabinet meeting by Labour and Social Security Minister Niki Kerameos and National Economy and Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis.
According to reports, the new increase, which will be implemented from April 1, was formulated taking into account the potential of the Greek economy and businesses at all levels, while the target remains for the basic wage to reach €950 in 2027.
In recent years, the minimum wage has gradually increased from 650 euros in 2019 to 880 euros, a 35.4 percent increase. This equates to 3,220 euros gross annually, meaning that those on the minimum wage today, before the upcoming new increase is factored in, are putting an extra five basic wages in their wallets for 2019.
Two sources with knowledge of the calculations made by the economic staff noted that the cumulative boost to the minimum wage after the five increases already implemented to date clearly exceeds the corresponding inflation rate, meaning that the real income of low-wage earners has been boosted.
The same sources pointed out that successive increases in the minimum wage have not affected the downward trend in unemployment, which stood at 7.7 percent in January, according to ELSTAT. This is the best performance since 2008 and represents a 2.1-point drop from the 9.8 percent recorded a year earlier. According to the newest annual report of the ERGANI system, more than 563,000 private sector jobs have been created between 2019 and 2025. According to ELSTAT, the number of people employed in January exceeded 4.4 million, a 16-year high.
The agenda
The items on the agenda of the Cabinet meeting are:
-Briefing by Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis on foreign policy and international developments,
-Report by Minister of Labour and Social Security Niki Kerameos and Minister of National Economy and Finance Kyriakos Pierrakakis on the provision of a concurring opinion on the determination of the statutory minimum wage and the statutory minimum daily wage for the year 2026,
-Report by Deputy Minister of National Economy and Finance Nikos Papathanasis on the scheduling of the completion and certification of milestones of the Recovery and Resilience Fund by 31 August 2026,
-Presentation by Minister of Immigration and Asylum Thanos Plevris of the bill for the implementation of the new Pact on Immigration and Asylum,
-Presentation by Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni of the bill for the protection of the local cultural heritage,
-Presentation by Minister of Development Takis Theodoricakos of a draft law on the transposition of Directives 2023/2225 on credit agreements with consumers and 2023/2673 on distance contracts for financial services,
-Presentation by the Minister of Digital Governance Dimitris Papastergiou of the draft law on the implementation of Regulation 2024/1309 on measures to reduce the cost of deploying Gigabit electronic communications networks,
-Presentation by the Minister of Education, Religious Affairs and Sports Sofia Zacharaki of the Ministry’s heraldic bill.
