Overview
- SPD grassroots activists delivered more than 4,000 signatures to the party executive seeking a members' vote to preserve the current Bürgergeld.
- In an interview with Die Zeit, Lars Klingbeil called the petition "exactly the wrong signal" and said he stands "100 percent" behind the reform plans.
- Leaders of the Union–SPD coalition plan to abolish the benefit in its present form and tie assistance more closely to obligations.
- Petition co-initiator Franziska Drohsel accused party leaders of stoking sentiment against unemployed people and urged funding through a wealth tax and higher inheritance tax.
- Klingbeil questioned the fairness of the existing inheritance tax and praised Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt as a "stability anchor" in the coalition.