There's supposed to be a meeting today (Sunday) with Chancellor Merkel and the chief members of the CDU-CSU Party and the SPD Party, over the pension chaos situation.
At the heart of the matter, you have a fair sized number of Germans who are retired now, but living at poverty standards.
Yes, you could have worked your entire life, and be sitting there presently at age 66....with 500 to 700 Euro a month in pension.
This meeting was supposed to occur last week, but got sidetracked because there are a fair number of political folks asking questions.
What they now agree upon (at least in public), there has to be a 'test' done for an individual to get some type of supplemental pension on top of their normal pension. What they don't want to do....is just admit the pension program is crap and unable to sustain people (which is pretty much how it is, if you spent forty years working at marginal pay jobs).
Where will the billion-plus Euro come from? Unknown.
How many pension folks are in the welfare case? This isn't clear. You'd have to go and first define where the dividing line will be. Will people in urbanized areas get more income? That's not clear either. It is safe to say that maybe a quarter of the retired population are in a welfare dilemma....some due to their choice in work....some due to divorce....and some due to choices made back in the 1970s when basic cost wasn't a big deal.
The odds that this 'fix' will only lead onto another chaos in three years? Well, it all depends on where you say the safe pension level is set.
To the question....aren't they just relabeling welfare money paid out presently to the substandard pension holders? You might make this statement to some degree. The trouble here is that if you show up and show 'need', it's centering on regulations and how that local welfare office will view your situation. You might get another 400 Euro in welfare funds easily, or find it fairly difficult to establish your need.
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