The planned tightening of citizens’ money is not enough for him: CDU politician Spahn wants to cut off support for people who do not accept a job offer. If necessary, the constitution would have to be changed.
Union parliamentary group vice-president Jens Spahn has suggested even stricter sanctions on citizens’ money. “People who can work and receive a job offer but do not accept it should basically no longer receive citizen’s benefit,” said the CDU politician to the editorial network Germany.
To this end, he is also bringing a constitutional change into play: “If a general deletion is not covered by the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court, we should just change the constitution,” emphasized Spahn.
Anyone who is made a job offer has the obligation to accept it, said Spahn.
He further explains: “Anyone who is made an offer or who is supported has the duty to take advantage of it. Anyone who then still refuses cannot rely on being financed by others. This can also be written into the constitution to record.” He viewed the federal government’s planned tightening of sanctions for citizens’ money as a first step in the right direction, but it was far from enough.
No citizen’s benefit for a maximum of two months
On Monday, the cabinet gave the green light for the planned tightening of citizens’ benefits. In the future, job centers will be able to completely cancel citizens’ benefit for unemployed people for a maximum of two months if those affected consistently refuse to take up work. “The possibility of taking up work must actually and immediately exist and be deliberately refused,” says the corresponding draft of a budget financing law, according to information from the dpa news agency.
The government relies on the fact that the Constitutional Court has generally considered a complete withdrawal of benefits to be possible if a recipient of citizens’ benefit refuses an existing and reasonable job offer without good reason.
IG Metall speaks of symbolic politics
IG Metall boss Christiane Benner criticized the planned tightening of sanctions on citizens’ money as “purely symbolic politics”. “We have an extremely small number of radical job refusers,” she told the newspapers of the Funke media group. Benner criticized: “We are being kicked down here, even though there are often black sheep on the capital side – tax evasion, fraud, deception. And they cause greater damage, including socially, than the few recipients of citizens’ benefit who are currently the focus of the discussion.”