Evidence from recent elections in European countries suggests that minimum wages have become increasingly contested. While the reasons for this are often rooted in national dynamics, it is puzzling that in countries with different political economies, minimum wages have become increasingly popular policies. To trace the changing salience of the topic, I conduct a multilingual computer-assisted text analysis by using electoral manifesto data. I show that in the last twenty-five years, statutory minimum wages have become an increasingly important topic for parties across the political spectrum. This effect is particularly pronounced for right-wing parties. A sentiment analysis shows that minimum wages have been discussed in mostly positive terms. Additionally, I use a keyword-assisted topic model to discern the contexts in which policymakers discuss minimum wages and find that how the topic is framed differs between left and right-wing parties. For the former, minimum wages are more closely associated with social security, for the latter minimum wages are often discussed in the context of immigration and social dumping. Finally, in order to inspect the short-term drivers of minimum wage growth in Europe, I use a two-part mixed effects models where I cluster minimum wage growth within countries and within cabinet tenures and find no statistically significant difference in minimum wage increases for left and right-of centre governments. Overall these results suggest that the relationship between centre-left parties as supportive of minimum wages increases and centre-right parties as opposed to hikes does not seem to find confirmation in the European context.