Tougher sanctions
Spahn wants to change the constitution – no citizen’s money for objectors
January 14, 2024, 9:04 a.m
The Union is stepping up in the debate about citizens’ money. “Anyone who is made an offer or supported has a duty to take advantage of it,” says Jens Spahn. Otherwise the funding should be canceled. And if the jurisprudence in Karlsruhe contradicts this, the constitution would simply have to be changed.
The deputy chairman of the Union parliamentary group, Jens Spahn, has called for a constitutional change to legally tighten sanctions on citizens’ money. “People who can work and receive a job offer but do not accept it should basically no longer receive citizen’s money,” said the CDU executive board member to the Editorial Network Germany (RND). “If a general deletion is not covered by the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court, we should simply change the constitution.”
Spahn continued: “Anyone who is made an offer or who is supported has the obligation to take advantage of it. Anyone who then still refuses cannot rely on being financed by others. This can also be written into the constitution to record.” The tightening of sanctions in citizens’ money recently planned by Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil is a first step in the right direction, “but they are far from enough,” emphasized Spahn.
Heil had announced that he wanted to tighten “sanction options against total objectors”. The state should then only cover the housing costs so that those affected do not become homeless. The cancellation of citizen’s benefit payments should be limited to two months.
Greens and unions skeptical
However, the Greens consider the planned deletion to be unconstitutional. “The Federal Constitutional Court ruled in 2019 that sanctions can generally only be justified up to a level of 30 percent,” said Green Party deputy Andreas Audretsch recently to the “Rheinische Post”.
Criticism of Heil’s plans also comes from the unions. IG Metall boss Christiane Benner told the newspapers of the Funke media group that the planned tightening of sanctions on citizens’ money was “purely symbolic politics”: “We have an extremely small number of radical job refusers.” Benner attacked the Union, which had pursued unsightly polarization. “Mr. Merz and Mr. Söder are playing minimum wage recipients against citizens’ benefit recipients. That is irresponsible,” she said. “Leave the church in the village. This is about people who are economically miserable.”
The IG Metall boss said that here people are “kicking down, even though there are often black sheep on the capital side – tax evasion, fraud, deception. And they cause greater damage, including socially, than the few recipients of citizen’s benefit on whom the discussion focuses just shooting in.”