One week after a Meeting of the Minimum Wage Commission Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) is increasing the pressure on the committee he has appointed. Since the EU Commission is to be informed in November how Germany is implementing the Brussels EU minimum wage directive, he expects a corresponding proposal from the minimum wage commission. “In 2026, the minimum wage will be between 14 and 15 euros,” Heil said on Monday in the “Morgenmagazin”.
The minimum wage is currently 12.41 euros and will rise to 12.82 euros at the beginning of 2025. The Commission will decide on further increases in 2026 and 2027 in June 2025. That is too late for Minister Heil. Actually. In his letter to the chair of the Minimum Wage Commission, Christiane Schönefeld, he states that “the directive on adequate minimum wages in the European Union must be implemented into national law by November 15th.”
He considers the EU target to be achieved “if the Minimum Wage Commission Reference value of 60 percent of the gross median wage taken into account in the next adjustment decisions”. The Commission says that if the relevant decisions are taken next June, this would at least correspond in terms of timing to the EU’s requirements and the minister’s expectations.
12.82
euro the minimum wage in 2025 is
The EU minimum wage directive is already several years old, but there was a transition period until mid-November, so national politics must now take action. With a view to the directive, the employee side in the minimum wage commission, which is made up of three trade union and employer representatives each and the impartial chairwoman Christiane Schönefeld, had also campaigned for a significant increase in June 2023.
However, with the vote of Schönefeld, the employers decided on a small increase of 41 cents to 12.41 euros on January 1, 2024 and a further 41 cents to 12.82 euros a year later. If the committee had followed the EU directive and taken the level of the median wage into account, there would already be an hourly wage of around 14 euros for the approximately six million minimum wage earners this year.
Until now, the calculation basis was solely the collective wage development in the previous two years. The so-called collective wage index of the Federal Statistical Office will also be used in the future.
Since there were frequent double-digit salary increases in 2023 and 2024, the index alone will lead to a significant increase in the minimum wage in 2026 and 2027. The EU directive must be taken into account. “It is now up to the Minimum Wage Commission to breathe life into these European guidelines,” writes Labor Minister Heil to Schönefeld. As a result, the minimum wage will rise towards 15 euros in 2027.
