For the first time, Federal Minister for Family Affairs Lisa Paus has made a concrete assessment of how high the planned basic child security could be in the case of children at risk of poverty. In 2025, these could result in benefits of 530 euros for the smallest and up to 636 euros for the oldest children, the Greens politician told the editorial network Germany (RND). This takes into account the announced increase in the standard rate of around twelve percent for 2024 and an assumed further “moderate” increase of three percent in the following year.
“That’s a good amount to give children a little more participation and equal opportunities,” said Paus. The amounts are therefore the sum of the future child guarantee amount and the additional child amount.
The traffic light coalition wants to bundle previous benefits such as child benefit, benefits from the citizen benefit for children or the child supplement in the basic child security. From 2025 there should be a so-called guaranteed amount for all children. This replaces today’s child benefit – 250 euros per month. On top of that, there is an additional amount depending on need, graded according to age and depending on the income situation of the parents. The less they earn, the higher it should be. The previous part of the citizens’ allowance for children should go up in it. In the case of basic income, children under the age of six are currently paying 318 euros a month and 420 euros for those aged 14 to 17.
Social Affairs Minister Hubertus Heil announced on Tuesday that the rates in 2024 should rise to 357 euros for under-six-year-olds and 471 euros for 14- to 17-year-olds. The traffic light had already agreed on the introduction of basic child security in its coalition agreement. However, a permanent dispute had developed between the Greens and the FDP about how much money the state should now spend on basic child security and whether benefits should be increased or not. An agreement was only reached on Monday night.
Paus expects costs to increase – Merz criticizes the bureaucratic effort
Paus assumes that the costs of basic child security will rise above the previously mentioned six billion euros in 2028 due to the further increase in the standard rate and child benefit. “If we achieve our declared goal of reaching as many families as possible in the coming years, basic child security will cost six billion euros and more,” emphasized the minister. “If we then add the additional costs for the child benefit increases that have already taken place, the higher child benefit and future child benefit increases, we are already at well over ten billion euros,” the minister predicted. “This federal government is doing a lot for families with children,” she added.
Union faction leader Friedrich Merz criticized the coalition plans. “The bureaucratic effort involved in securing basic child security will be so high that at the end of the day hardly anything will reach the children,” said the CDU politician to the newspapers of the Funke media group. The country is choking on bureaucracy.
This is also shown by “the alleged agreement on the traffic light for basic child security: 2.4 billion are to be spent – 500 million of them for additional administrative work,” said Merz. “That shows all the madness!” He also emphasized that more education for the children, rather than more transfer payments for the parents, was the right way. “We need a national effort for education and integration for children.”