As of: March 28, 2024, 7:28 p.m
By: Mark Stoffers
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Is the traffic light's new pension package not yet dry? Because now critical voices from within our own coalition about Pension Package II are becoming louder.
Berlin – Criticism of the traffic light’s new pension package comes from all camps. The opposition, economists and a civil servants' union had already expressed skepticism about the new pension package II, which Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) and Christian Lindner (FDP) presented in March.
While the economist Martin Werding sees a group that is “most burdened” by the new pension package, the police union (GdP) is up in arms against the idea that the SPD minister could imagine having civil servants in the pension fund like in Austria to be paid in. To make matters worse, resistance to the pension concept from within our own traffic light coalition is now apparently emerging.
New traffic light pension package: FDP politician calls for improvements to the pension package – “It’s not enough”
The parliamentary managing director of the FDP parliamentary group, Johannes Vogel, is calling for improvements to the traffic light coalition's pension package. “As it stands at the moment, in my opinion, the pension package does not yet meet the requirements of the coalition agreement with regard to generation-appropriate security,” complained Vogel in the “
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
” on Thursday (March 28). “That’s not enough yet.” We’re still at the very beginning of the legislative process – so there is plenty of opportunity to “improve the overall package in this sense.”
Does this mean the traffic lights will be the next source of argument in the house? According to their own statements, there are two central approaches to the new pension package: The planned build-up of a capital stock on the stock market can be pushed “in the direction of a real stock pension based on the Swedish model”. And one can “find additional pension policy measures that lead to a more stable financial situation for the pay-as-you-go pension in the face of demographic change”.
Criticism of the FDP's push for the new pension package: SPD and DGB are upset
Judging by the statements made by the social policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, Martin Rosemann, the Social Democrats strictly reject Vogel's proposal for improvements to the new pension package. It is a fundamental part of the agreements within the coalition that no contributions to statutory pension insurance should be used to build up individual entitlements from a capital stock. “That is our line – not because we have an aversion to stocks, but because there is room for it in the company pension plan,” said Rosemann in the
Handelsblatt
.
Vogel's statements have also been heavily criticized by the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB). In the opinion of board member Anja Piel, pension package II is generation-appropriate. “The strong statutory pension has been a benefit for all employees for decades,” she told the
Handelsblatt
. “The agreement on a stable pension level relieves the burden on younger generations, ensures higher pensions, reduces gaps in security and ensures less need for private provision.”
Improvements to the new traffic light pension package: pension at 63 and retirement age in focus
Vogel's push for improvements in the new pension package primarily sees a need to catch up in two aspects. “We could, for example, take another look at the so-called pension at 63,” said Vogel, who is also deputy FDP chairman, in reference to the traffic light’s new pension package. He would find even more modern “real flexibility in the retirement age, moving away from the rigid standard retirement age as we know it so far.”
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The federal government wants to stabilize pension levels and slow down the expected increase in pension contributions. The pension level indicates what percentage of the current average wage someone who has always worked at the average wage for exactly 45 years receives as a pension.
Pension contributions should not increase too much: real stock pension as part of the new pension package
Because this costs large amounts of additional billions, but pension contributions should not increase too much, the financing should be based on an additional pillar: a capital stock on the stock market. In total, at least 200 billion euros are to be invested by the mid-2030s. Ten billion euros should then flow from the income to the statutory pension insurance every year.
In the 2021 election campaign, the FDP called for a “stock pension” that went well beyond this, which Vogel was now promoting again. Accordingly, part of the insured person's pension contribution - two percent of their income in the long term - should be put into a funded provision, from which the insured person's individual pension entitlements will then arise.
Traffic light pension package II: Clear words against the accusation of stock pensions as a “casino pension”
When asked whether he really believed that he could now implement this in negotiations on pension package II with the SPD and the Greens, he said: “In any case, it is the only proposal that - together with enough skilled immigration based on the example of Canada - will demonstrably improve pension finances permanently stabilized and ensures that pension levels rise again in the long term.” The political left must give up “its aversion to stocks”. “Sweden and Norway have similar systems and certainly don’t represent a gambler mentality.”
Sahra Wagenknecht in particular, who was already concerned about the pension increase in 2024, had expressed her dissatisfaction with the stock pension. The Bundestag member and leader of the alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) described this as a “casino pension”. But despite the criticism, the FDP may even be prepared to provoke the next traffic light dispute with the new pension package. “We are preparing for tough discussions with our coalition partners. But we owe it to future generations,” explained the social policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Pascal Kober, to the Handelsblatt.