The traffic light coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP is threatened with a new conflict – this time about parental allowance. Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) tweeted in response to concerns from Family Minister Lisa Paus (Greens) about savings in parental allowance on Tuesday: “If the responsible colleague is not convinced of the change in parental allowance, then she can and should make her contribution to consolidation in a different way perform.”
The background is Paus’ plan to lower the income limits for parental allowance and thus reduce the group of those entitled to parental allowance. The limit is to be lowered from the current taxable annual income of EUR 300,000 to EUR 150,000 in the future. In this way, Paus wants to make the savings contribution that was imposed on her – like the other departments – for the 2024 federal budget by Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP).
According to RTL/ntv information, the family minister said in an interview with the broadcasting group that around 60,000 families would probably no longer be entitled to state wage replacement benefits during parental leave in the future. A spokesman for the Ministry of Family Affairs said on Tuesday that with just over a million parental allowance recipients in 2020, around five percent of all parental allowance recipients would be affected by the new regulation.
Largest part of the budget committed
All departments, including hers, should have made savings in the 2024 budget. But 90 percent of their budget is legally bound, explained Paus. “So I had to approach a statutory benefit and had the order from the Federal Minister of Finance to cut parental allowance.” In this situation, she decided not to cut the benefit, but to see how it could be done in a socio-politically balanced way. “For equality, in fact, this is not a showpiece,” said Paus.
It was said from circles in the Ministry of Finance that in the course of preparing the federal budget for 2024, all departments were asked to make their contribution in order to achieve a sustainably financed budget in accordance with the debt brake of the Basic Law. “The departments are free to set priorities at their own discretion.” How the goals of the respective ministry are achieved is up to them. However, the necessary amount of savings could “also be realized elsewhere” at the Ministry of Family Affairs if there were technical concerns about parental allowance, it said.
Criticism from the FDP and Union
The FDP parliamentary group strictly rejects deterioration in parental allowance due to significantly lower income limits. “I think it’s wrong that we are now cutting precisely these funds at this point,” said the parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr in Berlin. This applies in particular from the point of view of equality between men and women in the family. This would deteriorate with the advance of Paus.
The Union faction in the Bundestag also massively criticized the planned cut. Paus’ plans noticeably restricted the options for many families, especially in large cities with high living costs, said Union parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz (CDU) before a meeting of the CDU/CSU members of the Bundestag in Berlin. CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt spoke of a “fatal signal to the families in Germany”. Dobrindt emphasized that parental allowance is not a social benefit, but a family benefit.
