A group of younger Green politicians in the Bundestag and the European Parliament has released a policy paper opposing any increase of the statutory retirement age to 70.
The members of the Green party argue that the security of retirement must be maintained. “Instead of needing retirement rebels, we need retirement saviors,” stated Timon Dzienus, a co-author of the paper. Echoing the sentiment of former CDU Federal Minister for Labour, Norbert Blüm, the Green politicians insist that “the pension must be safe.”
In the document, the proposed extension of working life until age 70 is firmly rejected. The authors contend that those who suggest pension cuts or a retirement age of 70 lack any understanding of people’s actual living conditions. They emphasize that the pension is a matter of social justice, not a source of “generation conflict,” and argue that the elderly should not be forced into destitution.
According to the authors, the statutory pension system is often portrayed far worse than it actually is. They point out that the federal subsidies for pensions have remained stable for the past 20 years, as has the contribution rate, despite the rising number of pensioners. The signatories conclude that the situation is not critical, and the focus now should be on setting the course correctly.
To safeguard the system, the Green proponents suggest several concrete measures: raising small pensions and ensuring the retirement level remains at a minimum of 48 percent. Furthermore, they demand that the pension level must rise noticeably in the long term, alongside reforms in tax policy that would draw more heavily from higher incomes to finance the statutory pension.
One of the co-authors and Green Member of the Bundestag, Karoline Otte, told Spiegel that wealthy individuals “who have the strongest shoulders and massive fortunes cannot continue to evade responsibility.” Otte and Dzienus both belong to the left wing of the Green party. The paper was co-signed by 15 other Green MPs from the Bundestag, one MEP, and the two leaders of the Green Youth.
This paper also serves as an indirect response to an article written by more moderate, or ‘realist,’ Greens, Sandra Stein and Till Steffen. Stein and Steffen had recently argued that public confidence in the statutory pension was rapidly declining, stating that for younger people, the sentiment had shifted from Blüm’s “The pension is safe” to, “I won’t get a pension anyway.” Both of them advocated for a gradual increase in the retirement age to 68 by 2043 and reducing incentives for early retirement.
