A new pay scale is coming in October for the Armed Forces and Security Forces, which, according to announcements by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the Thessaloniki International Fair and the specification of measures by National Economy Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis and Deputy Minister Thanos Petralia, provides for salary increases from €63 to €276 per month. When considering both the horizontal increase of €30 per month on all basic salaries that officers and non-commissioned officers of the Armed Forces and Security Forces received on April 1, 2025, and the “special working conditions and hazard allowance” that increased by €100 monthly (gross) from July 1, 2025, the cumulative enhancement of uniformed personnel salaries ranges from 13% to 20%, percentages that correspond to 1.5 to 2.5 additional monthly salaries annually.
More specifically, the new pay scale for Armed Forces personnel has the following characteristics:
- In the new Armed Forces pay scale, the basic salary will be determined based on years of service, and to the resulting amount, an increase will be applied using a coefficient according to rank.
- The logic of pay scales changes. There will now be scales that depend only on years of service, and on top of these, the rank-based increase will be applied.
- The scales are reduced from 35 to 20.
- The rank system of the Armed Forces is being reformed.
- Based on the new rank system, differentiation is created in rank-based increases for Categories B and C for future years.
Regarding the Security Forces:
- The Police, Fire Service, and Coast Guard are also transitioning to the new pay scale structure.
- The basic salary increase based on years of service is the same as that of the Armed Forces.
- The rank increase coefficient differs slightly, taking into account the different rank progression between the Corps. Essentially, the logic of 35 scales is “broken” and limited to 20, directly linking basic salary to years of service. The non-commissioned officer or officer will no longer advance to a different category only through administrative decisions or rank upgrades, but will automatically see improvement in their salary based on their length of service. On top of this new basic salary, the increase coefficients are applied. At the same time, the responsibility position allowance increases (e.g., for majors from €39 to €100, for colonels from €78 to €200, etc.) and for the first time, a command allowance is introduced in the Armed Forces.
This means that the higher the position of responsibility, the greater the increase, resulting in senior officers having a significant difference compared to a newly appointed non-commissioned officer.
Common pay scale
To understand the scale of increases, we should mention that today we have a common pay scale with four categories for the salary classification of Armed Forces and Security Forces personnel.
Category A: Personnel originating from Higher Military Educational Institutions (ASEI) or corresponding Officer Training Schools of the Hellenic Police, Coast Guard and Fire Service, those directly classified or through examination into the Officers’ Corps and common Corps from their designation as officers, special duty officers of the Hellenic Police with university degrees, and Special Services officers of the Fire Service, as well as the Hellenic Police and Coast Guard. This category also includes those originating from warrant officers and permanent non-commissioned officers who transfer to the Officers’ Corps of the Armed Forces and Security Forces.
Category B: Non-commissioned officers, warrant officers, and officers originating from the non-commissioned officer training schools of the Armed Forces (ASSY), officers of Law Decree 649/1970 (A’ 176), non-commissioned officers, sub-inspectors and corresponding officers originating from training or non-training schools of the Security Forces, as well as police officers, firefighters, and coast guards of the same Corps.
Category C: Personnel originating from EP.OP. – OPY – EMTh – EPY, as well as police personnel originating from Category D.
Category D: Special guards – border guards of the Hellenic Police. With the new pay scale in the Armed Forces, the average increase will be €145, but there is differentiation:
- In Category A (senior officers), the average increase will be €276 per month,
- In Category B (non-commissioned officers), the average salary increase will be €128,
- In Category C, the average increase will be €103. In the Security Forces, the average increase will be €111: in Category A it is €236, in Category B €128, in Category C it is €92, and in Category D (special guards) it is €63 per month gross.
The costs
It should be noted that the number of Armed Forces and Security Forces personnel is 151,422. Of these, 75,567 are Armed Forces personnel, 55,207 are officers and non-commissioned officers of the Hellenic Police, 12,448 are Fire Service personnel, and 8,200 are Coast Guard officers and non-commissioned officers. In total, with an average salary increase of €145, the total annual cost for the Armed Forces reaches €152.5 million including employer contributions.
For the Police, with an average monthly increase of €111, the annual cost is €88.5 million. For the Fire Service and Coast Guard, the average increases are also €111, with costs of €20 million and €13 million respectively. The total cost of the reform amounts to €279 million. Thus, the total enhancement of basic salaries and allowances for Armed Forces personnel from all the above increases will exceed €320 million. Of this amount, €107 million is the expenditure for the first two installments of the increases, and the remaining €213 million is the expenditure for the 3rd installment (in October), which will be the largest.
Published in Sunday Afternoon Edition
