(de-news.net) – Following the AfD’s resounding victory in the Saxony-Anhalt election, the governing coalition in Germany is under increasing pressure to modify its reform agenda. While Union politicians and economists warn against abandoning pension reforms and highlight divergent opinions on social security, fuel prices, migration, and demographic pressures, SPD figures are continuing to advocate for a greater social focus.
SPD Chairwoman Bärbel Bas has signaled that the Federal Government’s planned reform agenda may need to be adjusted following the AfD’s wide-margin victory in the Saxony-Anhalt state election. While defending the need for reforms to preserve Germany’s social welfare systems and help revive economic growth, Bas stressed that they could not be pursued at the expense of workers. In her view, the government’s approach would have to reconcile reform with secure employment, decent wages and falling rather than rising prices. Bas said many people remained uncertain about the future of pensions, health care and long-term care. Those who had spent decades working, she argued, needed reliable security in retirement, while people caring for relatives at home required stronger support. Against that backdrop, she warned that political rhetoric suggesting people would have to work more and longer, take fewer sick days and generally accept tougher conditions was contributing to uncertainty and eroding trust. The SPD, she said, intended to remain capable of governing while working to regain public confidence, both after the election and ahead of the coming electoral contests.
Steffen Krach, the Berlin SPD’s top candidate, likewise argued that the pension reform could be recalibrated in cooperation with the CDU. He said the central problem was not that the SPD was obstructing reform but that many people had come to equate reform with cuts. That perception, he argued, was strengthening the AfD and demonstrated the need for what he described as a broader “social turn.”
Krach said the pension proposals should therefore be reconsidered, citing the view that 80 percent of Germans regarded the overall reform package as socially unbalanced. People with 45 years of employment and contributions, he maintained, should continue to be able to retire without deductions. Similarly, workers who remained employed but required some additional housing assistance should not be disadvantaged by cuts to housing benefits. In his assessment, the resulting sense of unfairness had helped create the political conditions reflected in the Saxony-Anhalt election result. He also argued that the election should prompt the CDU to acknowledge that changes to the government’s reform agenda were necessary. Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Krach said, had an interest in responding to the scale of the setback rather than simply continuing the existing course, particularly because the CDU had lost more than half of its support. It would be difficult, he argued, to maintain that the coalition had handled everything correctly under those circumstances.
The broader political signal extended beyond Saxony-Anhalt, Krach said. Election polling and public assessments of the government’s pension and other reforms suggested that many Germans increasingly associated the term “reform” with reductions in benefits. Voters dissatisfied with the SPD, CDU, Greens, Left Party or FDP were consequently tending toward the AfD. Reversing that trend, he argued, would require a “social turn” centered on measures that gave people the sense that reforms were being implemented fairly. Restoring that confidence, he said, was essential if the SPD wanted to prevent the AfD from continuing to benefit from public dissatisfaction.
Experts defend pension overhaul amid post-election pressure
Meanwhile, Union parliamentary deputy Sepp Müller rejected the SPD’s renewed call for a fuel-price cap. He said the CDU remained concerned that price controls could produce shortages, pointing to Hungary, where such a measure had been followed by fuel shortages and empty gas stations. The prospect of a similar situation in Germany, he argued, was unacceptable. Müller, who serves on the government’s energy-price task force, therefore opposed imposing such a cap. Müller also argued that the parliamentary timetable made it unrealistic to adopt additional relief measures before the state elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. There was simply not enough time, he said, to complete the necessary legislative process at such speed. At the same time, he called on the Federal Cartel Office to intervene more quickly if companies were found to be charging potentially excessive prices. On pensions, Müller rejected demands from the SPD for major changes to the reform package. He argued that the coalition’s credibility depended on implementing agreements reached by its governing parties rather than repeatedly reopening them. Although individual provisions could be modified during the parliamentary process, he maintained that the central objective remained to provide secure pensions for all generations.
Economist Martin Werding, meanwhile, cautioned the Federal Government against drawing the wrong conclusions from the Saxony-Anhalt result. He argued that the Bundestag and government should continue to examine the pension commission’s carefully considered recommendations and make adjustments where necessary, but should avoid dismantling the package as a whole. The underlying demographic pressures, he warned, would become increasingly pronounced over the next decade, making pension reform necessary regardless of the election result. Werding also warned that restrictive immigration policies could have consequences for the financing of Germany’s welfare state. Current projections for future pension and overall social-security contributions, he noted, are based on assumptions of persistently high net immigration. Actual migration figures have already declined substantially in recent years, however. If Germany failed to make clear in the international competition for mobile workers that skilled labor migration remained welcome, Werding argued, economic development could be weakened while the financial pressures on the social-security system increased.
A similar position was taken by Jörg Rocholl, chairman of the Federal Ministry of Finance’s Scientific Advisory Board and a member of the pension commission. He argued that dismantling the pension package would be the wrong political response to the Saxony-Anhalt election and that Germany instead required more reforms to address its major economic and social challenges. Rocholl maintained that the proposed pension changes could provide both greater security and higher benefits if implemented quickly. For average earners with long contribution histories, he said, the increase could amount to several hundred euros a month, with one cited example involving an average earner who had contributed for 45 years receiving an additional 777 euros per month. He argued that the potential benefits extended particularly to recipients of low and middle pensions and that the opportunity to implement the reform should therefore be used rather than abandoned.
