Shortly before the beginning of the negotiations on the basic pension, leading CDU politicians from eastern German states are calling for improvements for the unemployed. The basic pension does not protect many citizens in East Germany from poverty in old age, it is said in a letter to Chancellery head Helge Braun, who is the SPIEGEL.
"We can not accept this discrimination of East German pensioners," write the Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer, Thuringia's CDU leader Mike Mohring and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern party chairman Vincent Kokert. Accordingly, the coalition should make it possible for people to receive a basic pension who were unemployed for a long time after reunification.
So far it is envisaged that the basic pension should only be granted to insured persons with at least 35 contribution years. This requirement is often for future East German pension age "an unacceptable obstacle to the basic pension, since the periods of unemployment are not taken into account," write the CDU politicians. In concrete terms, Kretschmer, Mohring and Kokert therefore demand that the 35 contribution years include periods in which those affected were unemployed or self-employed until 2006 for at least five years.
"Important contribution to a good cooperation in Germany"
"We ask that this request be included in the deliberations," it says in the letter. 30 years after the reunification, this was an "important contribution to good cooperation in Germany".
A working group of politicians from the Union and the SPD meets for the first time on Friday to find an agreement in the dispute over the basic pension. Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) and Chancellor Brown (CDU) had already worked out a first compromise paper, which should serve as the basis for the talks. An agreement is uncertain.
Controversial so far was a means test: the SPD wants to give it up, the Union has demanded. A compromise could be that only income is checked. The design depends on how many people are entitled to the basic pension and how expensive it will end up.
