Pension reform: CDU MP Reddig threatens rejection

In the coalition's internal struggle over the planned pension reform, CDU Bundestag member Pascal Reddig threatened to reject the draft law if it deviated too much from the agreed compromise. The CDU politician warned the coalition to move away from the reform out of fear of unpopular decisions: "The voters will not reward us for the fact that some are now falling into a kind of short-sighted social populism and are afraid of not wanting to reform again." Reddig spoke out in favor of adopting the pension commission's recommendations "in one package."

The economist Martin Werding has also intervened in the dispute over the federal government's planned pension reform. Werding is part of the old age security commission set up by the federal government, which developed the 33 recommendations for reforms. He calls for counter-proposals from the political parties. "Anyone who now wants to remove important components from the commission's package of recommendations should make offers about what can happen instead," said the economics professor from the Ruhr University in Bochum to the newspapers of the Funke media group.

The trigger for the renewed debate about pension reform was the AfD's election victory in Saxony-Anhalt. Since then, the Union and the SPD have been debating the consequences that should be drawn from this defeat. Prominent SPD representatives such as Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig are demanding that planned reforms such as the abolition of the zero-deduction pension after 45 years of contributions be re-examined.