Ten member states all located in the east have a minimum wage of under €600 — Bulgaria had the lowest gross (before taxes) minimum wage (€286) across the EU.
Nine other member states, all located in the east of the EU, followed with minimum wages between €400-€600 per month: Latvia (€430), Romania (€446), Hungary (€464), Croatia (€506), the Czech Republic (€519), Slovakia (€520), Poland (€523), Estonia (€540), and Lithuania (€555).
In five other member states, located in the southern part of the Continent, minimum wages ranged between €650 and just over €1,000 per month: Greece (€684), Portugal (€700), Malta (€762), Slovenia (€887), and Spain (€1,050).
In the remaining seven member states, all located in the west and north of the EU, minimum wages reached above €1,450 per month: the United Kingdom (€1,453), France (€1,521), Germany (€1,557), Belgium (€1,594), the Netherlands (€1,616), Ireland (€1,656), and Luxembourg (€2,071).
For comparison, the federal minimum wage in the United States was €1,098 ($1,257) per month in January 2019.
The figures represented a disparity in minimum wage across the 22 member states; the highest minimum wage in the EU was more than seven times higher than the lowest.
However, the disparities in minimum wages across the EU Member States are considerably smaller after price level differences are eliminated: minimum wages in the member states with lower price levels become relatively higher when expressed in purchasing power standard (PPS), and relatively lower in the member states with higher price levels.