FDP demands changes
SPD no longer wants to untie the pension package
March 29, 2024, 5:22 a.m
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Pensions should increase, but contributions should not. The traffic light also does not want to affect the retirement age. In retrospect, the FDP is uncomfortable with Lindner and Heil’s reform package. However, the SPD does not want to tolerate any changes to it.
The SPD has rejected demands from the FDP faction to improve the traffic light coalition’s pension package. “With Pension Package II, we are strengthening pensions in the long term and ensuring that younger generations will also benefit from secure pensions,” said the Parliamentary Managing Director of the SPD parliamentary group, Katja Mast, to the “Rheinische Post”. “This is generation-appropriate because it means young people know that they can rely on their pension later,” said Mast. The proposal from Labor Minister Hubertus Heil from the SPD and Finance Minister Christian Lindner from the FDP “implements the coalition agreement one-to-one. This is a central project of this government,” said Mast.
The SPD politician responded to an initiative by the parliamentary managing director of the FDP parliamentary group, Johannes Vogel. The pension package does not yet meet the requirements of the coalition agreement with regard to generation-appropriate security, Vogel told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. Above all, he called for the planned development of a capital stock on the stock market to be pushed forward “in the direction of a real stock pension based on the Swedish model”. He also questioned the so-called pension at 63 and called for “real flexibility in the retirement age, which would move away from the rigid standard retirement age as we know it so far.”
“Make retirement age more flexible”
FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr confirmed this. “By starting stock pensions, we are putting retirement provision on another pillar,” said Dürr to the “Rheinische Post”. “However, we have to take further steps – because taxpayers and contributors will not be able to cover pensions alone in the long term,” warned Dürr. He also spoke out in favor of further expanding pension funding and also talking about making the retirement age more flexible. “In Sweden, for example, many people voluntarily work longer hours,” argued Dürr.
The federal government wants to stabilize pension levels and slow down the expected increase in pension contributions. At the beginning of the month, Heil and Lindner presented a reform package with which the pension level of 48 percent should also be guaranteed for the future. 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. 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.