PressSplit
Follow us on Google
The pension needs to be reformed: contributions to the statutory pension for self-employed people should also be increased. However, officials do not do this. The pension expert believes this is a big mistake.
Berlin – It’s one of the biggest debates about (injustice) in Germany: about 21.5 million people in Germany receive a pension. German pension insurance data shows that the average total pension benefit was recently €1,289. At the beginning of 2025, 1.4 million pensioners nationwide received an average gross pension of €3,416, according to the Federal Statistical Office. What many already perceive as large inequalities is now becoming more acute as a result of proposals for reform of the Pensions Commission that have now come to light. Contributions are likely to increase for many and some groups will be included in the compulsory pension in the future. Not only officials.
The pension is to be reformed – self-employed people and members of parliament will soon be able to pay into compulsory pension insurance. However, officials do not do this. © photo alliance/dpa | Michael Bahlo/Thomas Banneyer/Kay Nietfeld/Fernando Gutierrez-Juarez (editing)
In the current episode of our video series “You Want to Know.” Munich Merkurs from Ippen.Media we spoke with Henriette Wunderlich. She is a pension expert at the German Social Association (SoVD) and is critical of recently published pension reform proposals. Main changes in the package of measures: Introduction of a capital pension into compulsory pension insurance, financed by additional contributions of up to two percentage points. In addition, the retirement age will be gradually raised, the “63-year-old pension” will be abolished, and members of parliament and the self-employed should be included in compulsory pension insurance. However, officials do not do this.
Inequality between pension and pension
Many readers think this is unfair – before the conversation, they sent questions to Wunderlich in response to our call. And the OVD expert agrees with this. “We understand this very well,” she said in an interview. OVD members also report this, Wunderlich says. “Those insured in compulsory pension insurance perceive it as a two-class system and often feel like second-class pensioners.”
The OVD rejects some of the reform proposals that should be implemented by the federal government and are currently being considered. For example, many social partners would prefer to consider the cost of a funded supplementary pension as an investment in a funded pension. Wunderlich believes it is a mistake to continue to exclude government employees from the statutory pension because most people believe both systems are fundamentally unfair.
“Because the level of benefits is very high. You can roughly say that the average pension ends where the pensions of civil servants begin,” says Wunderlich in a video interview (you can find the whole conversation about pensions and the question of what the reforms mean for you here). YouTubechannel and in the detailed video below). “I can understand why people don’t think it’s fair. And also because insurance for government employees is not really discussed,” complains a pension expert. “People always talk about compulsory pension insurance and create the impression that there are pensioners who have very high pensions – this simply does not exist in compulsory pension insurance.” Wunderlich continues: “Those who have a gross pension of more than 2,400 euros from compulsory pension insurance are only nine percent of pensioners. It’s just an imbalance.”
However, for pragmatic reasons, Wunderlich can still understand that in the future civil servants will not receive a mandatory pension: “This is difficult from a constitutional point of view, because the status of a civil servant is strictly protected. “When many new people join compulsory pension insurance, they initially make a lot of new contributions, but eventually they also receive pensions.” It is argued that civil servants in compulsory pension insurance will be a financially neutral step in the long term. “But for reasons of solidarity, they should come.” (Sources used: video interview “You want to know”, German pension insurance, report of the Old Age Commission, Federal Statistical Office)