At the end of last year, pensioners in Germany with at least 45 years of insurance received an average pension of EUR 1,543 per month. This emerges from a response from the Federal Ministry of Labor to a question from Left Party leader Dietmar Bartsch, about which the editorial network Germany (RND) first reported and which is available to the dpa. The pension increase implemented this month has not yet been included in the figures.
With a view to the number, Bartsch spoke of a “shameful record of the pension policy of the last two decades”. There are still large differences between men and women and between East and West. Men came to an average pension payment of 1637 euros per month, pensioners received an average of 300 euros less (1323 euros). In East Germany, an average of 1403 euros per month flowed, in the West German federal states 1605 euros. Germany needs a significantly higher pension level, Bartsch demanded from the RND. “This can be financed through a major pension reform towards a “pension fund for everyone” – an insurance fund into which all employed people pay: including civil servants, the self-employed and above all members of parliament and ministers.” He is also demanding an extraordinary pension increase of ten percent from the traffic light this year to compensate for inflation. “It must not be that ministers, state secretaries and pensioners collect 3,000 euros inflation premium, but pensioners continue to lose purchasing power in real terms.”
With the annual pension adjustment, old-age pensions rose by 4.30 percent in the west and by 5.86 percent in the east at the beginning of July. The so-called security level of the pension is currently a good 48 percent. The value describes the ratio of the pension to the average income for the case of 45 years of contributions for an average earner. The amount of the individual pension depends on how many so-called payment points insured persons have collected in the course of their working life. Whoever earns as much as the average in the country in a year gets a point for it. There are also pension points for periods of child-rearing, training, illness or unemployment. According to the ministry, the at least 45 years of insurance, to which the analysis requested by the left refers, can also include times for which no contributions were paid.