Berlin SPD Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz promises “a dignified life in old age” – and above all has a stable statutory pension level in mind. FDP boss Christian Lindner calls for a “new way of thinking” and wants to make old-age security future-proof with a share pension. And the Greens are campaigning for a guaranteed pension to counteract old-age poverty.
At first glance, there are sometimes worlds between the pension policy plans of the SPD and the Greens on the one hand and the FDP on the other. On closer inspection, however, commonalities can certainly be seen that could be a solid basis for a three-party coalition.
“Above all, the traffic light has to rebalance the mix of pay-as-you-go financing and funding with a lot of swing,” says Martin Werding, who holds the chair for social policy and public finance at the University of Bochum. And when it comes to supplementary provision, the parties’ concepts went well together.
The FDP wants to build a funded pillar within the statutory pension with the share pension. The Greens advocate a community fund as a supplement. According to SPD ideas, citizens should voluntarily make additional contributions to statutory insurance and also be able to provide for private provision with a publicly managed standard product.
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A common denominator should therefore be relatively easy to find when building up a stronger capital base, even if there are still many unanswered questions. For example, what role the company pension and the social partners play in how compulsory supplementary provision should be and whether a provision fund or a standard product is managed by the state or private providers.
Pension experts also see potential for agreement in the first step towards citizens’ insurance. All three possible coalition partners could well live with obliging the self-employed to make adequate provision, says economist Gert G. Wagner from the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), who was a member of the pension commission set up by the grand coalition.
The only important thing is that there is freedom of choice in the form of insurance and an upper age limit for the obligation to take care of the pension. Joachim Ragnitz from the Ifo Institute in Dresden cannot imagine that a traffic light coalition would also include civil servants in the statutory pension insurance. Because that would be very expensive for the state.
Wagner and Ragnitz see little potential for conflict on the subject of retirement age, which had caused heated debates during the election campaign. The Ifo researcher expects a traffic light to stick to the pension at 67, which will not fully take effect until 2031 anyway. Therefore, there is no need to decide now about a possible further increase. According to Ragnitz, there could be reforms in the deductions and surcharges for earlier or later retirement in order to meet the FDP’s demand for more flexibility when retiring.
It would be important for the labor market and the social security that as many workers as possible actually survived in good health until retirement, says Wagner: “I hope that we will agree on effective measures that make early retirement less necessary through prevention through prevention and rehabilitation for health Improve the handicapped. ”The pension commission made suggestions that resulted in better cooperation between the employment agency, health, pension and accident insurance.
In any case, there is likely to be one major point of contention: the stabilization of the pension level. In their election programs, the SPD and the Greens promised to keep it permanently or at least in the long term at at least 48 percent – and Scholz has made this an issue again and again in the election campaign.
Economist Werding sees this with concern: “If the SPD prevails with its demand for a permanently stable pension level and no further increase in the retirement age, then the latent generation conflict will become a permanent one.” Wagner also warns against preliminary determinations: “The belief that one can Formulating a pension formula that will provide security for decades is naive. ”He advises setting up an old-age insurance council that helps politicians to find good compromises again and again.
Ifo researcher Ragnitz points out that a stabilization of the pension level beyond 2025 will be expensive in view of the retirement of the baby boomers. If the Liberals insisted on stable contributions out of consideration for employers, then the tax subsidy would have to rise. For the Liberals, however, tax increases are a red line that they do not want to cross in coalition negotiations. It is possible that a face-saving solution can be found through VAT, says Ragnitz.
Of course, it would also be conceivable to postpone the topic, since the pension level according to current law may not fall below 48 percent by 2025 anyway. Playing for time is not an option for the SPD, it is said from parliamentary groups. Scholz has repeatedly emphasized his will to form a progressive coalition that will last longer than one electoral term. But that will not succeed if one cannot find a viable and all satisfactory solution in pension policy and then argue about old-age security again in four years’ time.
A compromise could be to extend the safeguarding of the stable pension level at least into the electoral period starting from 2025. Because the pension commission had also recommended to stick to the system of holding lines for pension level and contribution rate in principle, but did not commit itself to an amount. There is likely to be a lot of need for discussion here in coalition negotiations.
The same applies to the basic pension, which only came into force at the beginning of this year. The SPD would like to de-bureaucratize this, the Greens want to develop it further into a guaranteed pension that includes significantly more people than before and makes them financially better. The FDP, on the other hand, plans to introduce an allowance in the basic security for income from the statutory pension insurance.
However the existing conflicts are resolved, ifo economist Ragnitz expects the pension policy of a traffic light coalition to be expensive: “Because the cost drivers of the past reforms will probably not be touched.” These include, for example, the pension at 63 or the mother’s pension , but also the “double stop line” for pension level and contribution rate.
More: Pension expert Axel Börsch-Supan: “No party dares to say what should be said”