Brussels – Inmates are entitled to a minimum wage, and EU Member States must ensure the principles of non-discrimination and proportionality are upheld should they review it and reduce it to a lower level. In response to a question from Anthony Smith, French MEP for the Left group, Roxana Mînzatu, the European Commission’s Executive Vice-President for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Education, explained that Brussels is closely monitoring how Member States are transposing the Directive (no. 2022/2041) and that, in this context, it will ensure that any changes to the statutory minimum wage for inmates comply with EU rules.
In his question, the French MEP pointed out that the Directive stipulates that “it is primarily the responsibility of Member States to ensure the correct application of the relevant legal provisions applicable to inmates,” even when they are “classified as workers.” In this context, Smith asked the European Commission how it monitors the transposition of this directive in Member States and whether it will take the necessary measures to ensure that inmates’ work is monitored in the EU. At the heart of the debate is Article 6 of the Directive, which regulates variations in the statutory minimum wage. “Where Member States authorise different statutory minimum wages for specific groups of workers or permit deductions that reduce the remuneration paid to a level below that of the relevant statutory minimum wage, Member States shall ensure that such variations and deductions comply with the principles of non-discrimination and proportionality, which includes the pursuit of a legitimate objective”, states Article 6, emphasising that “nothing in this Directive shall be interpreted as imposing an obligation on Member States to introduce variations in statutory minimum wages or deductions from them.”
In her reply, Mînzatu explained that “the Commission is currently assessing the state of play of the transposition measures notified by the Member States” and that, “as part of this assessment, the Commission will also verify compliance with Article 6 of the Directive of any national provision establishing a variation in the statutory minimum wage for prison inmates, provided that it falls within the personal scope of the Directive.” The Romanian Commissioner also specified that this will will be the case “where yhey have an employment relationship as defined by law, collective agreements or established practice in each Member State,
with consideration to the case-law of the Court of Justice.” In practical terms, if an inmate is engaged in an “employment relationship” as by national laws, collective agreements or the case-law of the Court of Justice, minimum wage protections must be guaranteed.
Work in prison
Although the deadline for transposing the Minimum Wage Directive was set for November 2024, the European landscape still appears fragmented. As of February 2026, only 22 out of 27 Member States had completed the process. Among those lagging behind are Sweden, Austria, Finland, Italy, and Denmark. Denmark, in particular, had sought legal recourse by appealing to the Court of Justice of the EU to block the directive, but the appeal was rejected in November 2025.
“In 2023, there were 500,000 prison inmates in EU prisons. Most prisons did not offer any vocational activities, despite the fact that work is a key factor in rehabilitation,” highlighted the MEP from La Sinistra in the previous question from October 2025. “When jobs are offered, they are mostly related to the running of the prison itself. Some prison boards, however, make prisoners available to private companies. These underpaid jobs allow the companies concerned to increase their profits at the expense of any genuine rehabilitation programme,” Smith explained. A case in point is Spain, where piecework remains legal in prisons.
In response to this previous question, the Irish Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law and Consumer Protection, Michael McGrath had reiterated on the one hand, that the management of detention remains a primary responsibility of the Member States, and, on the other hand, that Brussels is encouraging national governments to adopt EU standard prison management practices to facilitate social reintegration.
In Italy, the CNEL, in its study “Zero Recidivism”, presented in June 2025, confirms the urgent need for a change of course. Although the number of working inmates has risen by 44.6 per cent over twenty years (from 2004 to 2024), reaching 21,235, the longer-term purpose of this employment remains limited, with 85.1 per cent working for the Prison Service in routine maintenance roles. According to data from 31 December last year provided by Associazione Antigone—the Italian association for the protection of rights and safeguards within the criminal justice and prison system—only 3.7 per cent of prisoners are employed by external employers, whilst barely 10.4 per cent are enrolled in vocational training courses. All this despite the fact that 38 per cent of inmates have a remaining sentence of less than three years and could access alternatives to imprisonment, “which do not represent a waiver of the sentence, but a more effective and constitutionally oriented method of enforcement, capable of drastically reducing reoffending and increasing public safety.”
This lack of opportunities comes at an extremely high social cost, given that the reoffending rate among inmates in Italy stands at around 70 per cent, whereas this figure drops to 2 per cent among those who access alternative measures. This figure demonstrates the failure of a purely custodial system, which should instead be transforming prisons into hubs for training and active inclusion. The challenge set by the European Union through the 2022 directive is not merely a bureaucratic formality, but a call to recognise the dignity of work as a pillar of social rehabilitation.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
