Enlarge image
Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD)
PHOTO: JOHN MACDOUGALL / AFP
In the dispute over the planned citizens' income, a breakthrough is emerging.
The proposal for a resolution has now been sent to the Mediation Committee of the Bundestag and Bundesrat.
It is available to SPIEGEL.
Among other things, it provides for stricter sanctions against benefit recipients and lower so-called protective assets.
This should be 40,000 euros and 15,000 euros for each additional person in the household.
The planned waiting period of two years, during which the costs of the apartment will be covered without further examination, will be reduced to one year.
Union prevails in sanctions
The Union had insisted that there be more sanctions for recipients than originally planned.
Such reductions in performance should take effect if, for example, the unemployed do not apply for a job, although this was agreed with the job center.
These sanctions should not be imposed during the period of trust provided for by the traffic light – and deleted in the proposed resolution.
In addition, the CDU and CSU demanded that those affected be allowed to keep less of their own assets if they receive the state benefit.
The traffic light had provided for a saving of 60,000 euros.
This amount has now been reduced in the proposed resolution.
So far it was planned that the mediation committee of the Bundestag and Bundesrat would lash down a compromise on citizen income this Wednesday.
Now that the decisive issues have been resolved, agreement by both sides is now considered likely.
By Friday, the Bundestag and Bundesrat are to adopt the Citizens' Income Act.
On January 1st, the salary of single people should increase by more than 50 euros to 502 euros.
Statements from the parliamentary groups
After the agreement became known, the factions of the governing coalition commented on the compromise found.
Katja Mast, First Parliamentary Secretary of the SPD, was optimistic despite the concessions to the Union.
Citizens' income is not just about increasing contributions, but about a cultural change.
This remains despite changes.
Mast emphasized that it was particularly important that the placement priority in work would be waived and that young people in Hartz 4 families would be allowed to keep a significantly higher proportion of the money they earned in the future.
"These are big points for us that will remain so," says Mast.
The first parliamentary director of the FDP, Johannes Vogel, said he was "very confident" that the citizen's income would now find a majority in the Bundestag and Bundesrat and would come in 2023.
With the basic income one creates more fair performance and opportunities for advancement regardless of the origin.
The parliamentary group leader of the Greens, Britta Haßelmann, said she was confident that the citizens' allowance would come and that it was an important signal for all the people affected.
Haßelmann particularly emphasized that people are no longer “placed in any job, in any activity”.
The clear orientation is the integration of people into the job market.
Union is surprised at the traffic light's willingness to compromise
To his surprise, the traffic light was very largely willing to make compromises, said Friedrich Merz, CDU leader and chairman of the Union faction in the Bundestag.
It will no longer be the citizens' income that the coalition had planned.
The element of trust time "is completely deleted," said Merz - the introduction would have been the entry into an unconditional basic income.
Now there will be the possibility of sanctions right from the start if recipients do not comply with their obligations to cooperate.
The protective assets are practically halved and remain untouched for only one more year.
This means that the law is “capable of approval from our point of view”.
CSU parliamentary group leader Alexander Dobrindt stated: »Opposition works«.
"Serious system errors in the Hartz 4 update, which is misleadingly referred to as citizen money, could be eliminated".
Dobrindt describes the “lack of sanctions”, “exaggerated protective assets” and an “excessive waiting period” as the biggest mistakes.
"We waived the trust period in order to find a common compromise and majorities in the mediation committee," said Hasselmann.
"I very much regret that." SPD politician Mast spoke of a "workable compromise in the spirit of the matter."
Vogel said it had succeeded in "making a good law even better."
After the Union had blocked citizen's income in the Bundesrat, the discussion between the former coalition partners Union and SPD had boiled over.
CDU leader Merz recently accused the traffic light coalition of using the language of “the extreme American right”.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz responded with an attack on the largest opposition party and its leader.
The SPD was not surprised that the Union did not participate in the decision for a higher minimum wage, Scholz said at the Southwest SPD party conference in Friedrichshafen.
"But the fact that the Union didn't even manage to raise its hand a little bit when the Bundestag voted on it and agree to it, that's aloof and that's snobbish." ›Achievement must be worthwhile‹ to do nothing at all.«
muk/flo/sev/vme/dpa/Reuters
