The SPD politician wants recipients of basic security benefits to no longer have to fear sanctions by the end of the year.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin By the end of this year, recipients of basic security should not have their benefits reduced, even if they miss appointments or violate agreements with the job center. A law planned by Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) provides for a moratorium on sanctions. The draft bill is available to the Handelsblatt.
In November 2019, the Federal Constitutional Court rejected the then applicable sanction practice in basic security – colloquially Hartz IV. The judges in Karlsruhe ruled that the state may enforce the recipient’s obligation to cooperate by reducing benefits. But the possibility of a complete cancellation, up to and including the withdrawal of payments for rent and heating, is not compatible with the fundamental right to a decent subsistence level.
The federal government then ordered that only “mild” sanctions may be imposed on Hartz IV recipients – up to a maximum reduction in benefits of 30 percent. The SPD, Greens and FDP want to redefine the obligations to cooperate within the framework of the new citizens’ allowance they are planning by the end of 2022 at the latest, as agreed in the coalition agreement. “Until the new legal regulation, we are creating a one-year moratorium on the previous sanctions below the subsistence level,” it says.
If Heil now wants to suspend the sanctions completely, he is going beyond the coalition agreement. The principle of funding and demanding in the state basic security would then no longer apply by the end of the year. However, in response to the constitutional court ruling, the job centers are reluctant to cut benefits anyway. While they had imposed more than 900,000 new sanctions on average in the period from 2010 to 2019, it was less than 180,000 in each of the past two years.
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In addition to the abolition of the sanctions, the federal government also wants to extend the simplified access to basic security, which was introduced in the course of the corona pandemic, beyond the end of March until the end of the year. The federal cabinet passed a corresponding draft regulation from Heil’s ministry on February 23.
The assets should not be counted in the first two years of receiving citizen benefit
Anyone who applies for basic security does not have to disclose their assets for at least six months. It is also not checked whether the living space is considered appropriate. In his draft regulation, Heil also justified the extension with the planned citizens’ income, which is expected to be introduced on January 1, 2023.
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According to the coalition agreement, the assets of the beneficiary should not be taken into account and the appropriateness of the apartment should not be checked in the first two years of receiving citizen benefit. “In view of this, too, it is appropriate to extend the regulations for the simplified procedure until December 31, 2022 in order to enable a seamless connection in this respect,” write Heil’s officials.
However, the regulation is not without controversy: while the number of Hartz IV recipients is reaching new historic lows, “the federal government is extending easier access to basic security until the end of the year without viable justification,” wrote Holger Schäfer, labor market expert at the employer-related Institute of German Economy (IW ) on twitter. “Originally, the regulation was intended to cushion the consequences of the corona crisis.”
In the draft regulation presented at the beginning of February, Heil also refers to an accelerating rate of infection and a vaccination rate that is still too low. What is striking, however, is the explicit reference to the planned citizens’ allowance. As Schäfer rightly points out, the number of employable Hartz IV recipients has fallen from more than five million in 2007 to around 3.6 million in January this year. Even in the Corona years 2020 and 2021, the downward trend was not broken.
More: Interactive graphic on the welfare state: Everyone pays that much in taxes and levies in their lifetime – and everyone gets that much out of it