Greece stands out as a clear outlier in the eurozone when it comes to collective wage protection. The latest wage tracker from the European Central Bank reveals that only 10.6% of workers in Greece are covered by collective labour agreements, the lowest rate in the currency bloc by a wide margin. Across the eurozone, almost half of workers benefit from such agreements, with coverage exceeding 70% in countries like Austria.
This collapse in collective bargaining coverage puts Greece far off course from the EU’s target of 80% coverage by 2027—a goal set to strengthen wage-setting systems and ensure fair labour standards across Europe. At the start of the year, Greek coverage hovered close to 20%, but it has since fallen sharply, signalling deep structural weaknesses in the country’s labour relations framework.
Greece has formally committed—under the EU directive on adequate minimum wages, adopted into national law in 2024—to present a detailed action plan by December 2025 to expand collective bargaining. Discussions between the Labour Ministry and social partners began in May, yet no agreement has emerged. Trade unions, led by the GSEE, accuse the government of pursuing labour reforms that undermine collective agreements through extended working hours and greater flexibility for employers, tipping the balance further against workers.
The ECB’s tracker also suggests wage momentum is slowing. Negotiated wage growth across existing agreements is expected to ease to 3.2% in 2025 and fall to just 1.8% in the first half of 2026. While these figures reflect eurozone-wide trends, Greece’s situation is distinct: with such low bargaining coverage, many Greek workers do not benefit from the negotiated pay rises seen in other European countries.
Data from the Bank of Greece highlights how fragile wage protection has become. Enterprise-level agreements remain limited, covering only a small fraction of private-sector employees and frequently offering no pay increase at all. Even where raises are applied, they typically fall below inflation. Sector-wide agreements—long considered the backbone of European collective bargaining—have nearly vanished in Greece. In 2024, fewer than 50 sectoral and professional agreements were active, and only a handful were legally binding across their sectors. That number is estimated to have dropped further in 2025.
In a handful of industries, such as banking, insurance and hospitality, new agreements were signed with modest phased increases. But these cases are exceptions in a labour market increasingly shaped by individual contracts and fragmented negotiation structures.
