It was approved by majority vote by the competent committee of Parliament, the Ministry of Labour bill on equal pay between men and women for the same work or for work of equal value. In favor of the bill were the MPs of New Democracy with most opposition parties reserving their final position during the discussion and vote in the Plenary.
Labour Minister Niki Kerameus criticized this stance of the opposition parties, saying that: “no opposition party to date has said that it votes in favor of the transposition of the European directive on equal pay between women and men. Not a single party. Except New Democracy. It seems inconceivable to me. on an issue on which we all agree here in the corridors, that it is inconceivable in the year 2026 for a woman to be paid less than a man for the same job position, the same responsibilities and the same qualifications.”
Ms. Kerameus -in the context of the discussion of the bill- also presented some recent data concerning the labor market. According to what the minister argued, there was a record in the balance of salaried employment flows.
“It is the most positive balance and to be precise 332.843.000 new jobs is the highest performance of the first five months of a year from 2001 until today, that is, the last 25 years”, Ms. Kerameus stressed.
She also recalled that the government had committed that the average salary would exceed €1,500 in 2027. “As we speak today, one year earlier, we are already at an average salary of €1,528”, she underlined.
Finally, she also referred to the Labour Inspectorate, which now constitutes an Independent Authority.
“The labour inspectorate is truly doing titanic work. At this moment it has some of the best staffing levels in its history. As for inspections, let me tell you that 2025 was a record year for the labour inspectorate, 82,412 inspections, 17,556 sanctions and fines exceeding 53 million, it is an all-time record”, the Labour Minister concluded.