The section in the social policy chapter begins with a powerful announcement: "Instead of the previous basic security (Hartz IV), we will introduce citizens' money," the SPD, Greens and FDP explain in the paper they submitted at the end of their exploration for a traffic light coalition.

It looks as if the great labor market reform of the red-green government of 2005 is actually about to end.

However, this section is also an example of a number of important issues in which the designated coalition partners still have considerable need for clarification: The paper does not yet provide a clear concept of what is to be changed in the basic security with the title "Citizens' Benefit".

Dietrich Creutzburg

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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This is not the case in all areas. In the area of ​​social policy in particular, the explorers have made some very specific stipulations - for example, that they want to increase the statutory minimum wage “in the first year in a one-off adjustment to twelve euros per hour”. They also promise that there will be "no pension cuts and no increase in the statutory retirement age". At the same time, the pension insurance is to receive an additional transfer of 10 billion euros from the federal budget as early as 2022 in order to build up a supplementary capital stock.

The biggest and most prominent topic that still needs to be clarified is currently the question of how increasing expenditure should be financed.

The designated opposition leader of the CDU / CSU, Ralph Brinkhaus, has called the exploratory paper a "bad check";

the projects are "not only not financed in the area of ​​social spending".

The paper refers to the debt brake and rejects an increase in taxes “such as income, corporate or value-added tax”;

and also the introduction of a wealth tax.

What about the social security contributions?

The Greens chairman Robert Habeck later said that the explorers had already developed more detailed ideas internally on the financing issue. “The finances are better supported in the talks than the paper shows,” he said on ZDF. "We have given a lot of thought to how these sentences will then be backed up with concrete possibilities in the coalition negotiations."

In addition to the explorers' announcements, there is also a “missing spot” in their paper for discussion: unlike in all coalition agreements since 2005, there is no target to limit the sum of social contributions to 40 percent of gross wages. However, this is a “necessary determination”, warns employer president Rainer Dulger. Unfortunately, there are "no answers as to how the impending rise in contribution rates in pension insurance and in social insurance as a whole can be prevented". The CDU social politician Hermann Gröhe, vice chairman of the Union parliamentary group, also criticized: "The lack of commitment to the need for stable social security contributions is particularly worrying."This is currently 0.25 percent and will rise to 0.35 percent in 2022.