The city is expanding the circle of people who are entitled to the “Munich Pass” and thus to discounts on local transport, for numerous social offers and leisure activities in the city. On Thursday, the general assembly of the city council approved with a large majority an emergency motion by the green-red coalition to make the new, significantly higher income limits for the so-called “risk of poverty” the benchmark for access to the Munich Pass. The new regulation should come into force as soon as possible, probably on September 1st.
In mid-July, the social department, to the surprise of city politicians, published new values with which incomes single people and families in Munich are at risk of poverty. The figures were actually not expected until the end of the year when the new poverty report was published. According to this, the threshold for one-person households is now a net amount of 1540 euros and thus almost 200 euros higher than in the last survey in 2017, a family with two adults and two children over the age of 14 lives with them an income of 3850 euros net on the threshold of poverty. According to the poverty report published in 2017, 269,000 Munich residents lived in relative poverty at the time. With the new sleepers, the number should now be around 300,000.
With the decision, the city gains six months time
“If the new limits are now known, we should also recognize them with the Munich Pass,” said Anne Hübner, leader of the SPD/Volt parliamentary group, in the debate on the motion. This decision gives you half a year of time. According to the previous practice, the access requirements would only have been adjusted with the new poverty report. Clara Nitsche, Vice President of the Greens/Pink List, spoke of the “duty to provide a socio-cultural subsistence level” and advocated making the Munich Pass offer better known with a public campaign.
The coalition received support from the opposition. “A great application, I really have to say that,” said Alexandra Gassmann, socio-political spokeswoman for the CSU/Free Voters. “We hit the nerve of the people who bring their children to daycare, go to work and still don’t know how to pay the next electricity bill and the next purchase.” Thomas Lechner from the left called the application “a good surcharge, which I also attribute to our presence in the city council”.
Only the FDP/Bavarian Party rejected the application. The consequences are great, and there is a lack of information about the resulting burdens, for example for the social community centres, complained parliamentary group leader Jörg Hoffmann. They plead for the topic to be dealt with in the next social committee after the summer break.