The European rule would set the Portuguese minimum wage at 663 euros

The value of the Portuguese minimum wage is 28 euros based on the fulfillment of one of the criteria that Brussels is studying for the establishment of the guaranteed minimum monthly salary within the framework of the European Union: that the minimum wage of the Member States is at less, half of the national average salary. In June, the average Portuguese salary was 1,326 euros, which would put the reference value at 663 euros.

The European minimum wage project was taken up this week by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in the annual speech on the state of the Union. The manifest concern is to ensure the adoption of a minimum wage in countries where it does not yet exist. nor is there a tradition of collective bargaining to fix it sectorally. In the rest of the countries, Brussels also seeks to guarantee stable and clear criteria to define the legal minimum remuneration, since there is a wide variety of rules within the bloc.

So far, discussions about the European minimum wage have focused on two possible benchmarks: ensuring that workers earn at least 50% of the median wage in their countries or 60% of the median wage. The latter was also a proposal by the Vice-President of the Commission, Frans Timmermans, as a socialist candidate for the presidency of the European executive, then supported by Portugal. Europe’s largest workers’ organization, the European Trade Union Confederation, argues that both indicators should be imposed in European regulations. And he asks that they be not only indicative, but binding.

If, with respect to the first indicator, based on the current average salary in Portugal, the minimum wage of 635 euros does not reach the desirable minimum level, the same does not happen if the median salary is taken into account. Here, Portugal is one of only two European countries to reach the 60% threshold, along with France.

According to the annual report on the evolution of the minimum wage, from the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, Eurofound, Portugal and France slightly exceeded the reference of 60% of the median income in 2018. The Portuguese minimum wage He also made a substantial advance: he was below 50% of the median salary in 2008.

In the EU, Bulgaria (€ 312 minimum wage), Croatia (€ 546), Czech Republic (€ 575), Slovakia (€ 580) and Spain (€ 1108) have already discussed plans to determine a minimum wage ratio in around of these percentages. Outside the bloc, the United Kingdom (€ 1,760) also wants to reach 60% of the average salary.

In Portugal, the possibility of including these indicators in the weighting has not been publicly discussed until now. The government, which legislates the minimum wage after listening to the social partners, has more or less quantifiable indicators at hand to decide: “The needs of workers, the increase in the cost of living and the evolution of productivity, in view of their adaptation to criteria of the income and prices policy ”, says the Labor Code.

What there is, for now, is an objective value in the government program: to reach 750 euros in 2023. The idea continues to be to arrive with an income agreement, which the Great Options of the 2021 Plan kept on the table despite the pandemic. And guided by a specific indicator: the weight of the wage bill in GDP, and its approximation to the European average. It was 44.7% last year (47.5% in the EU27). Excluding Social Security contributions, salaries represent 34.9% of annual wealth (37.8% in the EU27).

For 2021, a further increase in the minimum wage is expected. But this will have less encouragement at the beginning than this year, which raised the salary from 600 to 635 euros. According to the Minister of Finance, João Leão, it will be an increase “with meaning” but contained by the effect of the covid in companies. There is no date for the discussion yet.