ATHENS

Greece will raise its minimum wage effective from April 1 for a third time since the conservative government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis took office in 2019, the prime minister announced on Friday.

The minimum monthly wage will go up from €713 ($758) to €780 ($829), corresponding to an increase of 9.4%.

“This increase obviously does not solve the problem, but it certainly offers a very important relief and above all, it indicates our intention to upgrade salaries in both the public and private sectors,” Mitsotakis said.

Mitsotakis stressed that the rise exhausts the maximum limit of what the country can afford, pointing out that in 2019, the minimum wage was €650.

The first rise by the conservative government was 2%, with a monthly gross minimum wage of €663 in January 2022, while in May 2022, the monthly gross minimum wage was raised by 9.7% to €713.

Meanwhile, the latest poll gave the New Democracy party a slight lead over the left-wing opposition SYRIZA, and Mitsotakis still leads the polls.

The poll conducted by Pulse company on behalf of Skai TV projected that New Democracy is ahead of SYRIZA by 4%, while Mitsotakis gets 35% as the most suitable prime minister, with 27% for opposition leader Alexis Tsipras.

Specifically, the poll said the New Democracy would receive 30%, leftist SYRIZA 26%, center-left PASOK would get 10%, followed by the Greek communist party KKE with 6%, Greek Solution 4%, and radical leftist MeRA25 3.5%.

Undecided voters were 13%.