"The pension is safe," said the former labor minister Norbert Blüm (CDU) once.
Now SPD chancellor candidate Scholz is promising: The pension will remain stable.
Berlin - SPD Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz has promised stable pensions in the event of an election victory.
"The SPD guarantees a stable level of pensions," said the Vice Chancellor of the German Press Agency.
The CDU and CSU, on the other hand, do not mention this in their election manifesto.
"Every pensioner, but also every young man and woman, should take a close look at this," advised Scholz.
If the Union deliberately did not guarantee a stable pension level, "you can work out what happened to a CDU-led government: then the pension level will fall," warned Scholz.
For stable pensions, first and foremost, the employment rate must be high - and that of women improved.
“We also have to ensure that someone who starts looking for a job at the age of 58 also finds a new job,” said Scholz.
Around the year 2030, securing the pension level will also require a slightly higher federal subsidy.
The state will still get this subsidy cheaper than the tax cuts desired by the CDU and CSU for top earners and high-income companies.
"You see very factually, a stable pension level is possible - everything else is interest-based ideology," emphasized Scholz.
Tax funds already cover around 30 percent of pension expenditure - the federal government spends more than a quarter of its budget on it.
When the strong cohorts born in the 1960s retire, the relationship between beneficiaries and contributors is likely to become even worse.
This year there had been almost no pension increase due to the Corona crisis. Only in eastern Germany did salaries rise by 0.72 percent. The reason was the cyclical slump in premium income in the pension fund. For the coming year, the pension insurance expects a clear plus. dpa