Germany's conservatives hail welfare reform compromise

Germany's Christian Democrats (CDU) and allied conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) said on Tuesday they were likely to vote in favor of a major welfare reform put forward by the ruling coalition after a compromise was reached in internal negotiations.

CDU chief Friedrich Merz said that the two conservative parties had succeeded in pushing through the amendments they had demanded after blocking the "Bürgergeld" scheme in the upper house on November 14.

"The coalition was very fast and — to my surprise — willing to a very large extent to make compromises here," he said.

What changes have been made?

Merz said the biggest success for the conservative bloc was getting the six-month "period of trust" removed from the scheme. This would have seen recipients receiving unreduced payments for this time even if they failed to appear at appointments.  

He welcomed the fact that recipients would now face sanctions from the outset if they did not fulfill their obligations under the scheme.

Alexander Dobrindt, who heads the CSU parliamentary party in the Bundestag, also hailed the removal of what he called "serious systematic errors" in the scheme.

Along with the abolition of the "period of trust," he named the reduction in the "protected assets" allowed to be held by a recipient.

Under the amended scheme, welfare recipients will reportedly be allowed to own €40,000 ($30,804) in such assets for a one-year period, instead of the €60,000 for two years originally planned by the coalition.

What have other parties said?

Not all parties are in agreement with the compromise that has been reached. The far-left Left Party was outspoken in its criticism.

Party leader Janine Wissler saying that the only thing left of the originally planned reform was a €53 increase in the base monthly welfare payment to €502 ($519) compared to the current scheme, known colloquially as "Hartz IV."

She blamed the opposition conservatives and coalition member the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) for watering down the reform, calling it a "competition in measliness at the cost of those affected."

The ruling coalition, whose other members are Olaf Scholz' center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the environmentalist Greens, for their part, called the compromise a "good basis."

On Tuesday, Scholz said at an economic forum organized by the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung in Berlin that the intended reform would "lay down the way job-seekers are supported in Germany for decades."

What happens now?

On Wednesday, a mediation committee from the two houses of the German parliament, the Bundestag and the Bundesrat, will talk over the points at issue and decide whether the compromise is acceptable.

If it is accepted, the compromise would then be put to the vote in both houses on Friday.

If it then receives parliamentary approval, the scheme is intended to go into force on January 1, 2023.

tj/jcg (dpa, epd, KNA, AFP)

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