Scholz after Grundrente agreement: probability of survival of the GroKo "pretty grown"

For months, the Grand Coalition disputed the land rent. The dispute made an early end to the Alliance more likely. The agreement on a compromise makes leading SPD politicians now more optimistic. The probability for the continuance of the grand coalition was "pretty much grown," said Finance Minister Olaf Scholz in Passau.

Family Minister Franziska Giffey appealed to the SPD to end the "end-time debates" over an exit from the government. The Grand Coalition has signed a treaty that will run until 2021, she told The World. "It serves the whole country if we have a stable government that wants to shape."

The leaders of the CDU, CSU and SPD had agreed on Sunday to introduce a basic pension, which is higher than the basic security. The contract will be awarded to pensioners who receive 35 years of contributions and whose contributions are less than 80 percent, but more than 30 percent of the average income. An income test is planned, but not a means test rejected by the SPD. To stimulate investment, there should be a participation fund for future technologies of up to ten billion euros.

Scholz described it as a "very big social policy milestone" that the agreement in the coalition was successful. "That was a question that was central to the legitimacy of the work of the government," said the vice-chancellor, who is also considered a promising candidate for the SPD presidency, on Monday evening at a discussion event of the "Passauer Neue Presse". The final decision on the continuation of the grand coalition, however, the SPD party meeting in December. (Read here an analysis of the stress tests of the Grand Coalition).

Resistance to ground rent compromise in the CDU

In the CDU, however, there is occasional resistance to the compromise. So there were on Monday in the party executive committee three votes against. Two of these no votes came from the leaders of important CDU associations: the Young Union (JU) and the SME and Economic Union (MIT). JU leader Tilman Kuban said after the meeting that the agreement was at the expense of the younger generation. The rejection will also be made clear in the group.

The Bundestag factions of Union and SPD want to discuss this Tuesday on the compromise. Criticism comes also from financial experts of the CDU. "The funding from the federal budget is not secured," said budget politician Eckhardt Rehberg the "world". The available cost estimates did not convince.

So far, the Grand Coalition assumes that the basic rent will cost up to 1.5 billion euros in the starting year 2021. The bulk of the money is to come in through a tax that does not yet exist, namely the financial transaction tax.

Marcel Fratzscher, President of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), sees the concept as a "small step in the right direction". In the fight against poverty in old age, he could help only conditionally, said Fratzscher the "Passauer Neue Presse". On the other hand, it helps only to systematically increase the pension entitlements of low-income people. "People with low hourly wages who pay into the pension fund have to receive proportionally more for their paid-in euro than someone with a very high income."