Overview
- The cabinet draft locks the pension level at 48% through 2031 and sets a higher baseline thereafter, keeping it about one percentage point above the path under current law.
- About 18 younger CDU/CSU lawmakers say they will withhold support, a number that could erase the coalition’s slim majority in the Bundestag.
- Chancellor Friedrich Merz rejects changing the bill’s wording and instead offers a companion declaration and a broader reform starting in 2032, with leaders still targeting passage before the year-end session.
- Labor Minister Bärbel Bas defends stabilizing the level beyond 2031, rejecting claims of intergenerational unfairness and framing a steady pension as core to security for current and future retirees.
- Expert views diverge: pension agency chief Gundula Roßbach cautions that low individual pensions do not equal household poverty and downplays a cost “explosion,” while economist Hans‑Werner Sinn warns of looming old-age poverty and SPD adviser Jens Südekum deems extending the safeguard beyond 2031 financially hard to sustain, urging longer working lives.