Economist Martin Werding warns that incorporating civil servants into the statutory pension system would threaten the financial sustainability of the entire system. He said the advisory council had urged reforms of the public‑sector pension scheme to improve its long‑term solvency, but also noted that a blanket application would require the state to cover employer contributions for all civil servants, a move that would create enormous budget gaps for the federal government, the Länder and municipalities.
According to Werding’s calculations for the 2023 council report, by 2035 the state would need to pay about €10 billion, by 2040 about €20 billion and by 2060 roughly €70 billion. More than two‑thirds of these costs would fall on the Länder, roughly a sixth on the federal government and the remainder on local authorities. Werding added that if a transition were started now, it would take until roughly 2070 for all newly appointed civil servants to be covered by the statutory pension scheme, and that pensions in the existing form would not disappear until after 2090.
Werding, a professor at the University of Bochum and a member of the federal pension‑security commission, has repeatedly urged policymakers to consider reforms that preserve solvency without creating untenable fiscal pressures.