Monika Schnitzer likes to initiate big debates. The Munich economist is also chairman of the council of experts, so her word carries weight in politics. Just a few days ago, in the fight against the shortage of skilled workers in Germany, she had called for 1.5 million immigrants a year. Now she is tackling the issue of pensions – and is triggering another debate.
Schnitzer calls for the widow’s pension to be abolished in its current form. Even if that were hardly possible retrospectively, millions of people in Germany would be affected, because married couples currently receive at least 55 percent of the deceased partner’s pension – regardless of whether claims were acquired during the marriage or not. “The current regulation reduces the incentives to take up your own employment,” said Schnitzer Mirror. In addition, single contributors would help fund pension entitlements for non-working partners who do not contribute to the scheme themselves. This contradicts the principle of equivalence, according to which the payments are generally based on the contributions you have made yourself. The pension insurance is already in financial problems.
Instead, the seldom used pension splitting should be mandatory in the future, Schnitzer demands: The pension entitlements acquired in a marriage are divided equally. After the death of a partner, the surviving dependents are left with this half plus their own entitlements acquired before the marriage. Given the apparent sensitivity of the issue, Schnitzer added that this was her personal position and not aligned with the other economists. DIW boss Marcel Fratzscher wrote on Twitter that an abolition would make sense, but only as the last step in several reforms.
The Union speaks of a “frontal attack on families”
Nevertheless, there are many reactions to Schnitzer’s initiative – most of them negative. Markus Söder, the Bavarian CSU Prime Minister, wrote on Twitter: “Abolishing the widow’s pension is wrong. That would reduce the lifetime achievements of many couples.” The parliamentary manager of the Union faction in the Bundestag, Thorsten Frei, even spoke of a “frontal attack on families”. And he added in the Picture added: “I have the impression that this is not about strengthening the business location, but about the implementation of abstruse socio-political ideas.” FDP politician Wolfgang Kubicki also doesn’t think much of the move: “The idea of abolishing the widow’s pension unsettles millions of older couples whose life planning was based on the promise of this old-age security.” And to Picture further: “I’m slowly getting the feeling that there is a fifth column in the democratic spectrum that wants to help the AfD succeed with such proposals.”
The social association VdK also rejects the demand. VdK President Verena Bentele said that Munich Mercury, she could “really not gain anything” from Schnitzer’s proposals for a nationwide pension splitting. Widow’s pensions are still an effective means of combating poverty among women. According to the statistics of the German pension insurance, a good five million people receive such a pension, the vast majority are women, who statistically live significantly longer than men.