Pension expert calls for an end to civil servants, teachers can also work as employees

Created: 01/16/2023 07:27

By: Fabian Hartmann

Do teachers have to be civil servants?

The Freiburg pension expert Bernd Raffelhüschen says: no!

© Sebastian Gollnow/dpa

Pensions are under pressure.

But the civil service pensions also burden the state – and thus the taxpayers.

Pension expert Bernd Raffelhüschen wants to change that.

Berlin – How long should, indeed have to, the Germans work?

Up to 67, 69 or even 70?

Leading economists recently fueled the debate.

In an interview with our editors, the chairwoman of the Economic Wise Men, Monika Schnitzer, spoke out in favor of "tweaking all the screws" - and raising the retirement age.

But not only the statutory pension is under pressure.

Civil servants' pensions are also a burden on the state budget.

The pension burdens of the federal, state and local governments are increasing rapidly - in 2021 the German state had to spend 77.28 billion euros on this.

And every year tens of thousands of retirees join them.

How long will this be good?

Pension expert: "University professors and teachers do not have to be civil servants"

The Freiburg pension expert Bernd Raffelhüschen has a clear opinion: not for long.

The civil servant status should therefore in future be limited to sovereign tasks.

That means: judiciary, police, financial administration in the narrower sense.

"It's hard to see why university professors or teachers have to be civil servants," said Raffelhüschen to the

.

"That should never have happened."

The state must now bear the burden of this.

Because: Existing pension entitlements can no longer be curtailed.

"That would be an encroachment on property rights, which is constitutionally excluded," said Raffelhüschen.

Therefore, it is also not easily possible to simply transfer civil servants to the statutory pension insurance.

“But we could stop making civil servants like teachers a thing of the past.

You could work as an employee in the future and thus pay into the pension fund, ”said Raffelhüschen.

And further: “It works.

Other countries have already done it.”

The future of pensions: Experts and politicians are concerned about pension burdens

In the debate about the future of pensions, the focus is always on civil servants.

In contrast to white-collar workers and blue-collar workers, their pensions in old age are financed from taxes.

Civil servants receive up to 71.75 percent of their last gross salary as a pension.

For comparison: the pension level – a statistical value that expresses how high the statutory pension of an average earner is after 45 years of contributions – is currently 49.4 percent.

And it is set to drop to below 46 percent by 2035.

Pension expert Raffelhüschen said in an interview with the

that even that is not enough.

In order to stabilize pensions, the pension level would have to fall further – to 42, 41 or possibly even 40 percent.

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For the Germans, this means that they would have to prepare themselves for even less pensions than they had planned anyway.

And the officials?

Not only pension experts warn, there are also politicians calling for savings.

Only recently, CDU Vice Carsten Linnemann told the

: "The civil service in Germany must be fundamentally revised." The pension burden threatened to overwhelm the budget.

Similar to pension expert Raffelhüschen, Linnemann is also promoting fewer civil servants in the future.

"Switzerland is showing us how - and I'm not aware that the administration there is worse," said the CDU politician.