Retirement debate
July 22, 2009
Just as many Germans are beginning their long-awaited summer breaks from their jobs, a political hot potato has been thrown into the public arena: retirement at age 69.
No legislators are seriously talking about drafting a bill to raise the retirement age - after all, an age hike from 65 to 67 was decided just two years ago.
And yet the comment pages of Germany's newspapers are full of outraged opinions about the effrontery of expecting people to stay at their jobs for an additional two years.
The debate stems from the latest monthly report issued by Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank. In the report, the bank calculated that a further hike in the retirement age by 2060 is necessary, given the ever-longer life spans of Germany's population.
Leading politicians have heavily criticized the Bundesbank for starting the discussion.
An "anti-social" debate?
"It's total nonsense," said German Labor Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD), a view echoed by many conservative and opposition members.
Juergen Trittin, a leading member of the opposition Green Party, recently told German public broadcaster ZDF that "such discussions only served to unsettle people."
"It's anti-social," Trittin concluded.
Ulrike Mascher, president of the country's largest pensioner lobby group, the Sozialverband VdK, said that only one in five Germans currently carries on to age 65 in a job with social insurance contributions.
"Retirement at 69 would represent a drastic cut to pensions through the back door," she told the Hanover paper, Neue Presse.
Bundesbank issues clarification
Other politicians reminded the nation that it would be difficult enough over the next few years to successfully extend the retirement age to 67 by creating enough jobs for seniors, without embarking on a new discussion about raising the age even further.
All of this has led the Bundesbank to issue a clarification of its report. On Tuesday, a statement from the bank denied suggestions that it had called for a rise in the retirement age. It had merely explained the correlation with the country's demographic development.
"The article in the monthly report presents the calculable consequences of this correlation as an 'if-then' scenario, without evaluating the situation politically," the statement said.
But some experts have welcomed the debate sparked by the Bundesbank's report. The Freiburg-based economist Bernd Raffelhueschen, for example, said the country mustn't shy away from an important discussion.
"At its core, it's about the question of if and how our society is preparing itself for a population with increasing life expectancy," he told the Kölner Stadtanzeiger.
"Retirement at 67 is due to be reviewed in the coming year, and we have to ask ourselves if employees even have a chance of staying in the labor market for such a long time," he said.
dc/dpa/AP
Editor: Susan Houlton