Union parliamentary group vice-president Jens Spahn has suggested a constitutional amendment for stricter sanctions on citizens’ money. “People who can work and receive a job offer but do not accept it should basically no longer receive citizen’s benefit,” said the CDU politician to the editorial network Germany. “If a general deletion is not covered by the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court, we should simply change the constitution,” emphasized Spahn.
“Anyone who is made an offer or who is supported has a duty to take advantage of it. Anyone who then still refuses cannot rely on being financed by others. This can also be included in the constitution,” added Spahn added. He viewed the federal government’s planned tightening of sanctions for citizens’ money as a first step in the right direction, but it was far from enough.
On Monday, the federal cabinet gave the green light to the planned tightening of citizens’ benefits. In the future, job centers will be able to completely cancel citizens’ benefit for unemployed people for a maximum of two months if those affected consistently refuse to take up work. “The possibility of taking up work must actually and immediately exist and be deliberately refused,” says the corresponding draft of a budget financing law, according to information from the German Press Agency.
IG Metall boss: “We’re being kicked down here”
The government relies on the fact that the Constitutional Court has generally considered a complete withdrawal of benefits to be possible if a recipient of citizens’ benefit refuses an existing and reasonable job offer without good reason.
IG Metall boss Christiane Benner criticized the planned tightening of sanctions on citizens’ money as “purely symbolic politics”. “We have an extremely small number of radical job refusers,” she told the newspapers of the Funke media group. Benner criticized: “Here we are being stepped down, even though there are often black sheep on the capital side – tax evasion, fraud, deception. And they cause greater damage, including socially, than the few recipients of citizens’ benefit who the discussion is currently focusing on.”
