As of: February 15, 2024, 5:29 p.m
By: Lisa Mayerhofer
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Despite years of contribution payments, millions of Germans are threatened with a meager pension in old age.
(Symbolic image) © Jan Woitas/dpa
New figures show that despite years of contribution payments, millions of Germans are threatened with a meager pension in old age.
This further fuels the debate about pension reform.
Berlin – It is becoming increasingly clear: the statutory pension alone is usually not enough in old age.
This is also suggested by a current response from the federal government to a request from the new Sahra Wagenknecht alliance.
Almost a third of full-time employees in Germany after 40 years of work receive a pension of less than 1,100 euros net per month.
Low pensions despite decades of contributions
Affected are the 7.086 million of the total of around 22 million full-time socially insured employees with a correspondingly low gross wage of currently less than 3,006 euros.
Sahra Wagenknecht therefore wants to make pension policy a central election campaign issue.
“Pensions are probably the biggest social problem of our time,” said party leader Wagenknecht to the
Augsburger Allgemeine
.
Low pensions despite decades of contributions are a social policy scandal.
“Germany is heading towards a pension catastrophe, that is socially explosive.” Germany has one of the worst pension systems in Europe, she concluded.
Social association criticizes Wagenknecht's statements
The German Social Association criticized Wagenknecht's statements.
“It is not only wrong to claim that the German pension system is one of the worst,” said chairwoman Michaela Engelmeier, according to a statement.
“Above all, it is dangerous and harms people’s retirement security as a whole.”
Because the statutory pay-as-you-go pension is fundamentally a really good system with its very extensive range of benefits - from old age, disability and survivors' pensions to rehabilitation and prevention services - but it still needs to be improved and further stabilized.
Germany's pension misery: Austria as a role model?
In fact, the pension system absolutely needs to be reformed - and that should have happened a few legislative periods ago.
The problem: Due to demographic change, more and more pensioners are paying fewer and fewer contributions, which means the system is coming under increasing financial pressure.
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The consequence: either the pensions have to be reduced in size or the contributors have to face an even greater tax burden, or deeper into the state treasury - and then there is no money for other important investments.
Wagenknecht does not make any concrete suggestions, but noted that he would like to use Austria as a role model.
The pension level there is much higher than in Germany.
However, the Austrians also took immediate precautions: the Alpine republic was not only more successful in terms of immigration, but self-employed people and civil servants also pay into the pension funds.
In Austria, there is a significantly longer waiting period in order to receive pension entitlements.
All of this cannot be changed so quickly for Germany.
Traffic light government plans second pension package
Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) is currently planning the new pension package II, which he wants to present in February.
The second pension package is intended to fix the pension level and introduce the so-called stock pension.
The plan is for pension levels not to fall to less than 48 percent of average wages in the long term.
At the instigation of the FDP in particular, a capital stock is to be created with the help of new debt, with which a return can be generated on the capital markets, which should relieve the burden on pension insurance contributions from the mid-1930s.
The draft federal budget for 2024 provides for twelve billion euros in new debt.
However, critics complain that the plans do not go far enough to sustainably improve the pension system.
With material from dpa and Reuters