Child benefit: Union politicians want to make it more difficult to obtain benefits from other EU countries

Now the deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Günter Krings, has called for the regulations on receiving German child benefit abroad to be made more difficult. He called for a change in EU law and an adjustment of the amount to the local cost of living.

The number of child benefit recipients abroad almost tripled

“Germany is the main exporter of child benefit to other EU countries; half a billion euros flow from our social security funds across our borders every year,” said Krings to the “Bild” newspaper. »It cannot be the case that child benefit is paid to children who live in Bulgaria or Romania in an amount that is calculated based on the cost of living in Germany. “We will no longer allow ourselves to be put off in Brussels on this issue,” said Krings. The high German child benefit obviously has “a strong incentive effect, especially towards southeastern Europe,” he said. "You have to be very naive to deny the danger of abuse."

The basis for German child benefit payments for children living abroad are European regulations on social benefits. The decisive factor is in which country the work is carried out - and therefore taxes are usually paid. German child benefit payments for children living abroad have increased significantly over the past decade. At the end of 2025, there were such payments for 291,292 children, the newspaper reported last week, citing figures from the Federal Employment Agency (BA) that were requested by the BSW party. In 2011 there were only 103,559 such cases, then in 2015 there were 158,169.