The pension system is coming under increasing pressure due to the aging population in Germany. The pension contribution for employees will have to increase in the coming years. The stock pension should help.
Berlin – With the pension package II, the traffic light coalition wants to stabilize pensions. Since the baby boomer generation will be retiring in the coming years, there will soon be more and more pensioners for fewer and fewer employed people, i.e. contributors. This puts the German pension system under financial pressure. The pension package is intended to ensure that the current pension level is maintained for seniors - but what about younger workers? Do they now have to shoulder the increasing financial burden caused by the aging society alone or is the government also reacting?
Pension contribution: Generational capital should also relieve the burden on employees
The left-wing pension expert Matthias W. Birkwald, among others, asked the government about this. According to the pension package plans, the pension contribution rate is to rise from the current 18.6 percent to 22.3 percent by 2045 - and is therefore a fifth more than before. This is intended to guarantee the pension level of 48 percent for the future. To further support the pension fund, the government also wants to invest at least 200 billion euros on the capital market by the mid-2030s.
The so-called generation capital, often also called stock pension, should also benefit paying-in employees: the pension contribution of 22.3 percent is to be stabilized in the future with the help of an annual distribution of ten billion euros from the planned generation capital of around 200 billion euros until 2045 - and thus relieve future contributors. Because without the distributions from generational capital, the contribution would otherwise be 22.7 percent in 2045. The government writes in its response that “employees and companies should each benefit half” from the hoped-for relief of around 0.4 percentage points per year. However, no further steps are planned to relieve employees.
According to the federal government's calculations, employees will probably have to prepare for an increase in pension contributions from 2028 - and probably an increase of 1.4 percentage points to 20.0 percent instead of 19.7 percent as previously planned. The contribution rate should then rise further to 20.6 percent from 2030 and then reach over 22 percent from 2035.
Employers warn of massive excessive demands due to pension increases
This is not well received everywhere: Employer President Rainer Dulger has warned that these pension plans will massively overwhelm the state and society. Dulger told
Bild am Sonntag that
he was “stunned” that Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) “now wants to massively increase pension spending again, even though we are facing the biggest aging surge that has ever occurred in Germany.”
He called for the plans to be stopped.
Pension package II would be the “most expensive social law of the century,” warned Dulger. The project must therefore be “stopped immediately”. The employer president described it as “unfair and unjust to spend 500 billion euros more on pensions over the next 20 years”.
With material from AFP