As of: February 17, 2024, 11:53 a.m
By: Julia Stanton
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Members of the Bundestag do not pay pension contributions, but still receive a pension: after just eight years in office, their pension entitlement is above average.
Berlin – Employees normally pay into the statutory pension insurance.
Once you have reached your pension insurance age, you are then entitled to your pension.
However, this regulation does not apply to members of the Bundestag.
Because anyone who works in parliament does not pay into the pension insurance.
This was already decided in 1971 and is intended to guarantee the independence of parliamentarians.
But so that there is no gap in the pension provision for the MPs, there is a so-called old-age allowance.
And it's not too tight.
Pension for members of the Bundestag: Retirement compensation is 2.5 percent of income
According to the German Bundestag website, MPs are entitled to this retirement allowance after just one year of membership in the Bundestag.
After one year, this amounts to 2.5 percent of the salary, the so-called MP compensation.
With each additional year as a member of parliament, the pension entitlement increases by 2.5 percent.
The maximum entitlement is 65 percent of income.
This claim would be achieved after 26 years of membership in the Bundestag.
So only very few MPs are entitled to this.
But even MPs who were only briefly members of the Bundestag receive high retirement benefits.
Members of the Bundestag are entitled to so-called old-age allowance.
(Symbolic image) © Britta Pedersen/dpa
According to
bundestag.de,
MPs currently earn 10,591.70 euros
(as of February 2024)
, this amount is subject to income tax.
2.5 percent of this salary amounts to 264.80 euros.
After a four-year term in office in the Bundestag, a monthly pension entitlement of 1,059.00 euros would arise.
After eight years - i.e. two legislative periods - there would already be a pension entitlement of 2,118 euros per month.
For comparison: According to the German Pension Insurance Pension Atlas 2023, the average pension (payment amount) was 1,384 euros per month at the end of 2022 - provided pensioners had at least 35 years of insurance.
An example calculation shows how much an employee has to earn in order to receive a pension of around 2,000 euros.
Left-wing politician Dietmar Bartsch criticizes retirement benefits for members of the Bundestag
The former left-wing politician Dietmar Bartsch recently criticized this inequality in a speech in the Bundestag.
He called for a revision of the regulation and demanded that members of parliament should also pay into the pension fund in the future.
Although there will be an increase in pensions in 2024, poverty in old age is still an increasing problem in Germany. Last year, the number of poor pensioners rose significantly.