Does the citizen’s allowance introduced at the beginning of last year prevent people from taking up work or is illegal work not sufficiently penalized? The debate on this has flared up again.
CSU General Secretary Martin Huber has called on the traffic light coalition to abandon the citizen’s allowance introduced at the beginning of last year. “The citizen’s allowance does not need any minor reforms, it must be abolished completely. Instead, the tried and tested social assistance should be reintroduced,” Huber told the German Press Agency in Berlin.
The SPD is lying to itself with the “fairy tale of job placement through citizen’s income,” said Huber. Studies have shown that citizen’s income prevents people from taking up work. According to him, citizen’s income also contributed to the poor performance of the traffic light coalition in the European elections. Huber said: “The traffic light coalition would not only be doing the economy and the working population a big favor, but also itself by abolishing it.”
In the renewed debate, CDU Bundestag member Kai Whittaker, the Union faction’s reporter on the citizen’s allowance, accused the traffic light coalition of putting the cart before the horse. “You can only sanction illegal work if you uncover it. To do this, we need better data exchange between all social authorities. Otherwise, the sanctions against illegal workers will fizzle out, just as they do against total refusers,” he said.
Before the difficult negotiations on the 2025 budget continue, there is a debate about tougher sanctions for misuse of the citizen’s allowance. The “Bild” newspaper reported on Saturday about a plan by the SPD to cancel the citizen’s allowance in cases of simultaneous illegal work.
“It is only fair to impose stricter sanctions on illegal work and welfare fraud,” explained Dagmar Schmidt, deputy leader of the SPD parliamentary group, when asked. “Neither of these are trivial offenses, we have always made that clear.” However, she did not comment on the details of the report. In general, Schmidt emphasized that the citizen’s allowance is “based on finding permanent work – it strengthens qualifications and further training.” This is also a response to the shortage of skilled workers.
Source: Stern
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