Pension: These are the plans of the CDU – and they bring them

Because there are fewer and fewer young people for more and more old people, the pension system is on the verge of collapse. The CDU has developed ideas to prevent this.

After 16 years of Angela Merkel, the CDU no longer has to govern – and now has more time in the opposition to deal with fundamental issues. Currently the focus of the working groups for the new basic program with which the party wants to run in the 2025 federal elections: pension and social policy as well as the pay-as-you-go system of the statutory pension, which is foreseeably facing major problems due to demographic change.

Experts from the party’s internal social security commission have been working together for a long time and have now written the first results on eleven pages. Before the package of measures is to be presented by party leader Friedrich Merz in the coming weeks, it has already been made public. It is also already available on t-online.

The most explosive proposal from the CDU experts: The retirement age should be raised by linking it to increasing life expectancy. But that’s not all. The Conservatives also want to lend a hand with company pensions and private old-age provision. t-online gives an overview of what the Commission is planning – and what the initiative could bring:

The Idea: From 2031, the CDU experts want to link the standard retirement age to life expectancy in a ratio of one to two. A year of life gained should therefore be spent one third in work and two thirds in drawing a pension. Specifically, the age limit would increase by four months for every year of life gained.

That’s it: The idea that Germans should work longer in order to increase the number of contributors who finance the pension payments is as old as it is unpopular – and at the same time very sensible from the point of view of experts. Because: Currently, there are still an average of around 1.8 contributors for every pensioner. According to forecasts by the German Economic Institute (IW), in 2030 there will only be 1.5 payers, and in 2050 it will probably only be 1.3 in view of the many retired representatives of the baby boomer generation.

In addition, people in Germany are getting older and are therefore drawing money from the pension fund for longer. Due to increasing life expectancy, many people stay fit longer, so they can easily work longer in most jobs.

“We must link the retirement age to life expectancy”explained the economic wise man Martin Werding recently in an interview with t-online. “Otherwise our pay-as-you-go system will come under too much pressure.” What he means by that: Without raising the entry age, it is almost impossible to guarantee a stable level of pensions for the growing number of pensioners.

The Idea: The CDU experts want to introduce an equally financed company pension, which should be mandatory for low earners. In this case, parity means that it is borne equally by employer and employee. This is to ensure that “Employees have a funded pension plan in addition to the statutory pension”. In the event of a change of employer, the company pension scheme should be unbureaucratically transferable.

The state funding should “focus on people who really need them”. “For people with low hourly wages, we want to support the employee part of the company pension with state subsidies”says the draft.

That’s it: The company pension is actually considered the second pillar of old-age provision alongside state pension benefits and purely private provision. The problem: In Germany, only every second employee has such a contract with their employer.

Many economists consider it wise to start here. Because low earners in particular often do not work in large companies that offer their own company pension. The obligation to make provisions can also bring a lot, because it would narrow the financial gap for individual pensioners. Practical questions are questionable, however: How, for example, could switching between employers be made easier? And the CDU experts also do not quantify the state subsidies.