German Papers Germany Plans to Pinch its Pensioners
It's widely known that Germany's aging demographics are a ticking time bomb for the country's social security system. So it shouldn't really surprise anyone that Berlin's politicians will have to squeeze pensioners in coming years. But theory is one thing. Try telling someone who's paid hefty social security taxes for the past three decades that they've been living above their means that whole time. News on Thursday from designated labor minister Franz Müntefering that pensions will certainly be frozen for the next four years -- and possibly even cut -- has German retirees riled.
"He's scaring people unnecessarily," Otto Wulf from a senior citizen association with ties to the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) told the Berliner Zeitung. Then again, maybe he isn't. The next government is also considering raising retirement age starting in 2012 from 65 to 67. Of course, first they'll have to convince Germans to continue working right up to the current cut limit, but the country's newspapers generally agree that things cannot continue as they presently are.
The left-wing Berliner Zeitung explains in a time of chronically high unemployment, the painful measures are necessary. "Pensions won't rise. How would this be possible? Its not nice, but it's unavoidable and it is, as things stand, not unjust," the paper comments. According to the paper, there is likely to be little sympathy for the elderly while 80 percent of Germans are presently scared of losing their jobs. Those people, argues the paper, "would be relieved to hear that they will be able to keep their current income for the next four years."
The right-wing daily Die Welt has praise for Müntefering's courage to announce that people wont be able to retire before the age of 67 and that there wont be higher pensions until 2010. "The years after that will probably be meagre for the elderly -- for 20 million pensioners this is bitter," admits the paper. But it also points out that those pensions are linked to worker wages which are likely to stagnate over the next few years. "Müntefering is clearly not willing to continue the decades-long practice of pretending everything is just peachy as far as social security is concerned."
And the Financial Times Deutschland couldn't be more pleased that Berlin's political elite seems to have realized unpopular choices have to be made. "Müntefering is breaking a taboo, because up until now politicians feared hardly anything as much as the easily unleashed anger of the pensioners. This new openness is refreshing, clever and it will lead to the desired goal of laying the foundation for stable pensions," writes the paper, adding that taking a tough stand on this issue could help the proposed grand coalition from stumbling from one crisis to the next.
The conservative Frankurter Allgemeine Zeitung argues simply freezing pensions for the next four years doesn't nearly go far enough. "The future coalition is trying to keep people happy. This is why pensions are not to be cut in this legislative period. This is only possible under one condition -- the federal allowance for pensions must rise by €2.8 billion," opines the paper, which worries Germany's gaping budget deficit will only grow. "It sounds as if the negotiators haven't heard anything of the urgent state of the government's finances."
