Status: 03.07.2021 12:21 p.m.
Members of the Bundestag receive comparatively generous retirement benefits, financed from tax revenues. A bipartisan group of MPs now wants to abolish this special status and reform the system.
Each year in parliament, a member of the Bundestag earns pension entitlements of 250 euros – until, if things go well, the maximum entitlement is reached after 27 years. That is at least 67.5 percent of the parliamentary allowance – a pension level that is far above the rate that most German citizens get. This is financed from tax revenues.
“Little understanding and acceptance in the population”
Several MPs from the Union, SPD, FDP, Greens and Left Party therefore no longer consider this special status for pensions to be appropriate and want the system to be reformed. In a statement quoted by the news agency dpa, it says: “Instead of receiving a pension under a special arrangement, members of the Bundestag should make provisions for their own age.” Because the previous regulation meets with “little understanding and acceptance in the population”.
However, the MPs do not agree on how the system should be reformed: The representatives of the SPD, the Greens and the Left are in favor of the MPs becoming compulsorily insured in the statutory pension scheme. There is also a supplementary protection, such as in the public service. The members of the Union and the FDP, on the other hand, demand that parliamentarians be free to decide on the form of their pension. For the coming legislature, the group unanimously calls for an intergroup to work out a reform proposal.
Reform for more acceptance
In fact, the pension scheme for members of the Bundestag is repeatedly criticized. From the perspective of the pension insurance, however, it does not matter for the finances of the pension fund whether the MPs pay pension contributions. In order to stabilize the financing of the pension insurance, the area is quantitatively “too insignificant”, so Reinhold Thiede, head of research at the pension insurance. Another question is whether the public’s acceptance of statutory old-age insurance would continue to increase if everyone was in one system.