How to ensure that working in Andorra once again allows people to live well and with dignity in Andorra. If there is one issue that, in my view, should compel all the parties standing in the 2027 elections to set aside sterile rivalries and reflect on a subject that, for once, could unite them around a major State strategy, it is this: how to ensure that working in Andorra once again allows people to live well and with dignity in Andorra.
In the programme Fent Números on 17 April 2026, I discussed what a trade union leader, Gabriel Ubach, had proposed a few days earlier and which, although at first it might seem like an unattainable exaggeration, served as the basis for me to raise what should be the central element of political debate in the coming years.
The idea was that the minimum wage could reach, within a reasonable timeframe, 2,500 euros. Sincerely, I do not consider this an extravagance, but rather the confirmation of a reality that more and more people are experiencing first-hand: the country is growing, yes, but a significant part of its citizens is not progressing at the same pace.
A Salary Update or a National Transformation?
The Government has set the interprofessional minimum wage for 2026 at 1,525.33 euros, following an increase of 5.4%, equivalent to twice the 2025 CPI. It has also reiterated that the objective is to move towards the threshold of 60% of the average wage, in line with the European benchmark.
However, what I am proposing is not a simple salary update: it is an operation of national transformation.
To understand the scale of the challenge, one figure is enough: bringing the minimum wage up to 2,500 euros in four years requires an approximate growth rate of 13.15% per year. This can only be achieved if the country generates more value per worker, improves productivity, raises qualification levels and reorganises its economic model.
Purchasing Power as a Major National Consensus
It is undeniable that the trade union leader mentioned is right in his social diagnosis, because it is evident that a portion of low wages no longer allows people to bear the cost of living in Andorra with sufficient dignity, especially due to the pressure caused by rising housing prices.
But to make such a statement, a very clearly defined strategy would be needed — one that, so far, I have not seen anyone propose with the necessary seriousness.
This is where politics in 2027 and the following years should rise to the occasion, placing purchasing power among the major elements of national consensus for the next legislature.
Not only housing.
Not only the minimum wage.
Not only growth.
Purchasing power is the sum of everything: salary, housing, cost of living, professional opportunity and the real capacity to build a life project in the country.
Reorganising the Andorran Economic Model
It is clear that Andorra will not truly be able to raise wages if it continues to accept that the major traditional sectors are structurally low-paid sectors. Retail, hospitality, restaurants, part of the services sector and a large share of less qualified jobs cannot continue to operate under the implicit resignation that “it has always been this way”.
Let us firmly reject this: it does not have to be this way.
Andorran retail must evolve towards greater advisory value, more experience, more omnichannel capacity and more value per customer. Hospitality and restaurants must stop competing only on volume and start competing on quality, organisation, professionalisation and average spend per visitor.
Construction must become more technical, more industrialised, and create a broad intermediate tier of qualified profiles.
Public Administration must be simplified, digitalised and stop being, in too many cases, a source of friction, in order to become a true platform for competitiveness. And, in parallel, the country must genuinely commit to the sectors that can strongly drive it upwards: health, sport, technology, digital services and advanced professional services.
Towards a National Pact for Purchasing Power
This direction fully aligns with the National Plan for Innovation and Diversification and with the Digital Strategy 2030 already defined by the Government, to which a National Pact for Purchasing Power 2027-2030 should be added, with annual objectives, clear indicators and verifiable commitments on salaries, productivity, housing, administrative simplification and sectoral transformation.
And, of course, with a very specific objective: to ensure that the citizen who works today — and often works a great deal — has, by 2030, a significantly better life than in 2026.
True Progress Is Reflected in People’s Lives
European comparative experience shows us that the countries that have achieved higher minimum wages did not get there through improvised impulses, but through stable mechanisms, more productive economies and stronger institutions. France, Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg are examples of this.
That is why we must place purchasing power at the centre of political consensus, abandon the traditional management of tension and begin building genuine prosperity. Because, ultimately, real progress is not measured only by GDP growth, but by a family’s ability to live with dignity from its work. Therefore, let us say it plainly: without decent purchasing power, there is no real progress.
