German Chancellor’s Coalition Eyes Further Pensions Reforms
Germany’s ruling coalition, comprising the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), is set to introduce additional reforms to the country’s statutory pension system. According to Stefan Nacke, the head of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group’s worker’s committee, the coalition has all the necessary facts at its disposal, gathered from previous pension commissions and now needs to make recommendations to facilitate decision-making.
Nacke emphasized the importance of a swift implementation of the planned reforms, stating that the pension system is too crucial to be used as a topic in election campaigns and that the coalition should not undermine the public’s trust in the system by spreading negative rhetoric.
The joint paper by the CDU and SPD outlines a plan to establish a pension commission, which will examine a new key indicator for the overall pension provision across all three pillars of the pension system by the middle of the legislative period. However, some coalition members are already expressing concerns that the commission’s proposals might not be implementable within the current legislative term.
Meanwhile, the Labor Minister, Bärbel Bas, presented a draft of a pension package on Wednesday evening, which includes measures such as maintaining the pension level at 48 percent and expanding the so-called mothers’ pension.