It was a first-class funeral that could be viewed in the Bundestag and Bundesrat on Friday. With a large majority, both houses voted to replace Hartz IV with citizen income. The states in which the Union is part of the government and even Thuringia, led by left-wing Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow, also raised their hands in the state chamber to say goodbye to the old system. For the Social Democrats it is a happy funeral, for them a nightmare that began about 20 years ago has come to an end, at least for the time being. “It was right to start a major reform back then,” says Labor Minister Hubertus Heil in an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “But fundamental mistakes were also made at the time.”
Back then, that was the time of the red-green federal government under Gerhard Schröder (SPD). When he took office in 1998, he declared that he would be measured by the number of unemployed. When the number soon rose again, the chancellor undertook a major labor market reform. A government-appointed commission drew up proposals – chaired by VW manager Peter Hartz, who still gives the reforms their unofficial name today. “There is no right to be lazy in our society,” said Schröder in 2001.
Poured into law, this meant that the long-term unemployed had to take almost any job and had to use up all their assets except for a small sum. Those who did not participate were cut by the job centers, in extreme cases down to zero. Schröder linked his political destiny to the implementation of these reforms.
Many Social Democrats saw the fate of their party sealed as a result. Supporters turned away angrily, accused the comrades of betrayal of workers’ interests, leading figures got into arguments, the best known of whom was ex-party leader Oskar Lafontaine. “Hartz IV has to go. That’s poverty by law,” he said. Hartz IV came into force at the beginning of 2005, and in the following federal elections the left more than doubled its share of the vote. Since then she has never stopped branding Hartz IV as a mess.
“There are only sanctions for very stubborn cases.”
So now the basic income should heal this stigma. The Union tightened important parts of the traffic light reform before agreeing to it in the Bundestag and Bundesrat. Minister of Labor Heil is still satisfied, the job is done for him. “We are leaving the old Hartz IV system behind with the citizen’s allowance on January 1,” Heil told the SZ. “That is a very good law.” The Minister of Labor also attaches this to the sanctions against recipients of aid, a topic that was particularly hotly debated. “There will be no more senseless sanctions,” says Heil. “We rely on cooperation, encouragement and qualification instead of general suspicion. There are only sanctions for very stubborn cases.”
Other things will also change compared to Hartz IV. The recipients of citizen income will no longer have to accept almost every job as a matter of priority, instead they should be able to catch up on training much more often than before. “Two-thirds of the long-term unemployed have not completed vocational training,” says Heil. Their assets are also spared significantly more, they are allowed to keep more of them if they receive citizen income. People would feel all of this in their everyday lives, says Heil. “That will help to detoxify the social debate.”
There have been improvements to Hartz IV for many years, the citizen’s income is only the last section that should now bring the matter to an end. It is the twelfth legal amendment to Hartz IV, albeit a particularly comprehensive one. The Federal Constitutional Court intervened with three judgments, most recently by severely limiting the money cuts three years ago.
Is that enough for the basic social security in the future to be popularly called citizen money instead of Hartz IV? It now also depends on the other parties. CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt this week mocked the “Hartz IV update”, which is always misleadingly referred to as citizen money. The Union has no problem using the term because it basically thinks Hartz IV is correct. And the left sticks to the term because Hartz IV has always been the epitome of social cuts for them. “It stays the same: Hartz IV has to go,” said the party and parliamentary group leaders as well as state representatives on Friday. For those who only half want to say goodbye to Hartz, intermediate forms are already circulating: “Hartz V” or “Bürgerhartz”.