The Verkhovna Rada is preparing to completely change the approach to calculating salaries for civil servants, judges, prosecutors, and budget employees. Instead of the subsistence minimum as the calculation base, it is proposed to introduce a new value — the so-called “tool value.”.
This is a package of four bills No. 13466–13469, initiated by a group of 120 people's deputies, including Parliament Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk. The documents have already been registered in the parliament.
Unlike the subsistence minimum, which is a social standard and affects pensions and social benefits, the “tool value” is a purely technical calculation basis for wages in the public sector. Its size will be established annually in the law on the state budget, separately from social guarantees.
For 2026, the deputies propose to fix the “base value” at a level of at least 3,470 hryvnias. The salaries of civil servants, employees of the judicial system, prosecutors' offices, as well as other employees whose salaries were previously calculated based on the subsistence minimum will depend on it.
If the new model is adopted, the subsistence minimum will remain only in the social sphere - as the basis for calculating minimum pensions, social benefits and other types of support. And all salary formulas for government officials will be rewritten with a reference to the "unit value.".
This decision is intended to decouple public sector wages from the social standard, which has long been artificially restrained and does not reflect the real cost of living. The new system is scheduled to be launched on January 1, 2026.
