(de-news.net) – The SPD has come under intensified pressure from Peer Steinbrück to adopt a far more assertive posture on pension reform. The former Finance Minister argued that, in light of ongoing demographic shifts, the statutory retirement age should be tied more directly and transparently to rising life expectancy. He further maintained that early-retirement mechanisms such as the pension at 63 and the supplementary “mothers’ pension” distort long-term system stability and should therefore be phased out. According to his assessment, the pension package adopted by the federal government in December represented a strategic misstep that failed to confront the structural pressures facing the system.
In mid-December, the federal government appointed an independent expert commission to develop proposals for a more sustainable reform blueprint and instructed the body to deliver its recommendations by summer. Yet Steinbrück voiced skepticism that the group would reach genuinely novel conclusions. He argued that the economic fundamentals—shrinking contributor cohorts, expanding beneficiary populations, and persistent fiscal stress—were already widely understood, and that expert agreement existed on several issues, including the necessity of revisiting cost-sharing arrangements within the social-insurance system. For these reasons, he questioned whether the exercise would produce outcomes beyond what was already evident in policy debates.
Steinbrück also urged a more comprehensive renewal of the welfare state that exceeded the narrow domain of pension policy. As cited in media reports, he viewed the proliferation of tax-financed social benefits—estimated variously at 170 to as many as 500 distinct programs—as symptomatic of structural fragmentation and inefficiency. He interpreted this landscape as an argument for consolidating support programs into standardized benefits delivered through a unified national digital platform, which he believed would reduce administrative overhead, increase transparency, and improve equitable access. In his assessment, genuine modernization would additionally require far-reaching administrative reforms, accelerated digitalization, a determined reduction in bureaucratic obstacles, and significantly higher levels of investment in infrastructure, education, and broader economic competitiveness.
Steinbrück praised Karsten Wildberger, Germany’s inaugural Minister of Digital Affairs, describing his early engagement with the Länder as unusually ambitious by contemporary standards. Nevertheless, he criticized the governing coalition for what he saw as insufficient resolve when confronted with entrenched stakeholder interests that resist structural change. He argued that the CDU-SPD coalition bore a particular responsibility to restore public confidence in the state’s problem-solving capacity. This obligation, he suggested, rested especially heavily on Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whom he urged to project clearer and more assertive leadership in the reform process.
At the same time, Steinbrück cautioned against narratives portraying Germany as an economy in terminal decline. Reports indicated that he rejected the repeated invocation of national deterioration and expressed frustration with business leaders who regularly threatened to move operations abroad. He insisted that Germany continued to possess substantial industrial and technological strengths, including a highly qualified labor force, a dense research and innovation ecosystem, globally competitive firms, a comparatively effective labor-relations model, and low levels of corruption by international standards. In his view, exaggerating the country’s shortcomings risked creating a self-fulfilling sense of crisis, undermining both public morale and investor confidence.
