Overview
- The SPD leadership used its Bundestag caucus to reject reducing social benefits as a path to economic growth.
- Party figures emphasized a growth strategy centered on innovation, education and research, saying reforms should work with workers rather than against them.
- The caucus paper backs inheritance-tax changes that spare a primary family home, increase taxation on large estates and business inheritances, and protect jobs during company successions.
- Leaders said the coalition will take up the inheritance-tax issue after a long-anticipated Federal Constitutional Court ruling, with the SPD preparing to table its own proposal.
- The SPD highlighted acute skilled-labor gaps and proposed easing immigration rules, including a right to stay for well-integrated workers with jobs, while awaiting guidance from the Social State Commission this month and the Pensions Commission mid-year.