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Pension bonus for helping?
Firefighters in Lübtheen in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
Photo: Philipp Schulze/ DPA
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) has suggested that long-standing volunteers should be able to retire earlier.
The idea does not seem to have been agreed within the traffic light - because it is now encountering considerable resistance from the coalition partner FDP.
Voluntary work is a question for society as a whole and cannot be passed on to the contributors alone, explained the socio-political spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Pascal Kober.
"It would also be unfair to the self-employed, who rarely have pension insurance."
The evening before, Faeser had campaigned to reward volunteer work with the pension.
Anyone who has provided such a service to the population throughout their lives can retire about a year earlier without deductions, said the minister in Potsdam at an event organized by the editorial network Germany.
Faeser wanted to honor the voluntary commitment of people in fire brigades and rescue services.
"More manageable at the moment"
At the same time, the interior minister warned that the volunteers might not be able to cope with the tasks at some point.
Like Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) recently, Faeser brought the debate about a compulsory social year back into play: Faeser described the chances of finding political majorities for this as “rather manageable at the moment”.
But she explained: “But I think we have to keep discussing that too.” For the minister, the target group for this are young people: “You will have to start with the young.”
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier relaunched an old discussion in June.
He advocated that young people in Germany should serve a compulsory social service.
That does not have to be in the Bundeswehr, young men and women can also support social institutions such as retirement homes, homeless shelters or in the care of disabled people.
Steinmeier did not say how long the service should last – but it does not have to be a year.
mrc/dpa