Berlin The pension increase for the around 21 million pensioners in Germany is expected to be less pronounced in the coming year than previously expected. With a view to the coalition agreement between the SPD, the Greens and the FDP, the acting Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) told “Bild am Sonntag”: “The forecast was 5.2 percent. Now I expect pensions in Germany to rise by 4.4 percent from July 2022. That’s still very neat. “
This year, the corona pandemic resulted in a zero rate for pensions in the west, in eastern Germany there was an increase of 0.72 percent as a result of the pension adjustment. The reason was the cyclical slump in premium income. A pension guarantee, however, prevents pension cuts. For the coming year it was expected that pensions in western Germany would rise by 5.2 percent and in the east by 5.9 percent.
The reason for the pensions that are now rising less sharply in the coming year is that the traffic light coalition wants to reintroduce the so-called catch-up factor.
The coalition agreement states that this factor in the pension calculation should be reactivated in good time before the pension adjustments from 2022: “This is how we ensure that pensions and wages develop in unison in the course of the Corona crisis and strengthen intergenerational equity as well as stability of the contributions in this legislative period. “
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Heil told the newspaper: “Two central concerns are important to me: With a government led by Social Democrats, there will be no pension cuts. And: The pension development must not be decoupled from the wage development. That is why we ensure a stable pension level over the long term. “
Pension guarantee with no additional burden for the contributors
The development of statutory pensions basically follows the development of wages. The pension guarantee, which has been anchored in law since 2009 in the wake of the financial and economic crisis, prevents pension cuts if the wages and salaries fall.
In return, a catching-up factor should ensure that this effect is compensated: that when wages rise again, the prevented pension reduction is compensated mathematically – the pension therefore increases less strongly. The aim was to ensure that the pension guarantee does not lead to a permanent additional burden on the contributors. The black-red coalition had suspended the catch-up factor from 2018 to June 2026.
The deputy FDP federal chairman Johannes Vogel told the German press agency on Sunday: “Wages and pensions should develop in unison even in crises. Pensioners must be able to rely on this principle – but the younger generation must also be able to rely on this principle. ”
This is the only way to keep intergenerational equilibrium and pension finances stable. “That is why it is right that, by reactivating the catch-up factor, we ensure that this also applies in full in the corona crisis and in the years to come – and that the pension is fair for all generations.”
Employers welcomed the plans of the traffic light coalition. The general manager of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations, Steffen Kampeter, told the dpa on Sunday: “The traffic light’s clear commitment to reintroducing the catch-up factor must now be implemented without any compromises.”
Pension guarantee and catching-up factor belonged together. The pension guarantee saved pensioners from a significant pension cut of more than 3 percent this year. It is a matter of fairness to take this financial advantage from the pension guarantee fully into account in the next pension adjustments, if an economic recovery sets in.
DGB criticizes the approach
“The negative economic consequences of the pandemic must be distributed evenly and fairly across the generations in the pension insurance,” said Kampeter. “Without a catching-up factor, pensioners would become crisis winners at the expense of the contributors, because pensions would then rise faster than wages.”
At the German Trade Union Confederation, however, the traffic light project met with criticism. Board member Anja Piel told the dpa on Sunday: “The reintroduction of the catch-up factor will practically ensure that pensions rise more slowly than wages and thus retirees will be further decoupled from the development of wages. Even without the catching-up factor, pensions will rise more slowly than wages from 2020 to 2025. “
With the catch-up factor, the pension adjustment in 2022 would be around 0.6 percentage points lower, according to Piel. “This does not reduce pensions, but they do rise 0.6 points more slowly than wages. That’s unfair. Our elders have to participate appropriately in the prosperity, after all, they have helped to generate the fundamentals for this. “DGB boss Reiner Hoffmann had already criticized the” fatal effects “of the traffic light parties’ pension plans in relation to the” Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung “.
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