Sofia: Income gap across the EU edged down in 2025, according to figures that Eurostat published on 23 October 2026. The bloc’s Gini coefficient, which measures how unevenly disposable income spreads across households on a scale from zero to 100, fell to 29.2 from 29.4 in 2024, a decline of 0.2 points.

A small move in a Gini score for income gap across the EU still carries meaning, because the indicator changes slowly. Eurostat builds it from the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey, and a value closer to zero signals a more even distribution. Compared with the earlier year, the new reading suggests that gains at the lower end of the income scale kept slightly ahead of gains at the top.

The gap between countries remains wide. Slovakia posted the most equal distribution at 23.0, followed by Belgium at 23.4, Czechia at 24.0, Slovenia at 24.6 and Poland at 24.9. Four of those five countries sit in central Europe, where tax and benefit systems have long compressed differences in take-home pay.

At the other end, Bulgaria recorded the highest Gini coefficient at 37.7, ahead of Latvia at 35.6 and Lithuania at 35.5. The distance between Slovakia and Bulgaria is 14.7 points, which shows how far income gap across the EU still depends on national wages, pensions and social transfers rather than on common rules.

Those national differences matter for policy in 2026. Cohesion funds, the European Pillar of Social Rights and the child guarantee all aim to narrow gaps, but each relies on member states to design and finance the measures. A slight improvement in the EU average does not mean every country moved in the same direction, and several governments still face pressure to raise minimum incomes and widen access to services.

Experts who follow income gap across the EU also caution against reading too much into one year. The 2025 survey reflects incomes earned in the previous year, so it captures wages, pensions and benefits before the latest energy and price shocks fed through. The next releases will show whether the improvement lasts, particularly in the Baltic states, where the figures sit well above the EU average.

Households in the middle of the distribution also matter for the political debate. When the Gini coefficient falls, it usually means that lower-income households gained ground through higher minimum wages, stronger employment or better social transfers. Eurostat does not attribute the 2025 change to a single cause, so governments will read the figures through their own policy lens and claim credit where wages and benefits rose.

For readers tracking social policy, the message is balanced. The latest data on income gap across the EU show a modest step forward and a persistent east-west and north-south divide. Eurostat will publish further breakdowns by age, sex and household type in the coming months, and those tables will reveal who gained most from the 2025 shift.