Pension: Merz ‘Move is an affront against all future pensioners

The black and red federal government wants to set up a pension commission. It should be called “reliable generational contract” and give recommendations for the securing and further development of statutory pension insurance and private and company pension schemes.

Sounds like a good plan, but the project has been seven years ago. In 2018, the grand coalition at the time agreed a pension commission.

And in 2025 the new, shrinked black-red coalition simply brings this old idea back to life. In his government’s declaration, Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced: “As a federal government, we will use a pension reform committee that draws on suggestions on how we can design the old -age insurance for all generations.” Um, what?

Merz ‘Move is an affront against all future pensioners. And he presses himself against important decisions.

It is not the case that the old commission would not have presented anything. No, the group of politicians, scientists and social partners threw a detailed report in 2020. The legislative period was almost over again – a shame – a shame.

Merz ‘tactic is transparent: Instead of encouraging the citizen and the citizen unpopular reforms, you let a commission do her job, pretend that you take care of the problem, and actually do nothing for stabilizing the pensions.

It is also not the case that only the 2018 pension commission would have developed proposals, in 2023 the board of directors only published a detailed report on the stabilization of pensions. But that was probably not a pensioner -friendly enough for the then Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD). Instead of taking the suggestions seriously, he described the economists that criticized the traffic light pension package as “established establishment-oriented expert landscape that has its sheep in the dry”. Well, you can of course deal with expertise.

Incidentally, the Federal Government does not only use the commission knitting. In total, the word commission is in 38 positions in the coalition agreement. To be fair: a few times the EU Commission is meant. But the word also likes to appear where Social Democrats and Union are not so easy: in the Chinestese strategy, in the social state reform, in the modernization of the debt brake.

Only there is nothing to use one commission after another. You also have to want to change something. And there is the main problem of the pension commission: The problem was analyzed in detail, by all possible experts with different perspectives. Now the pension question is no longer an economic one, it is a political one. The federal government has all information. Now she has to decide what she thinks is reasonable and what is not. For this she was chosen.