Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil’s plans for the “citizen’s allowance” are under general suspicion from the FDP’s point of view.
The SPD and the Greens would have liked to have anchored an unconditional basic income in the coalition agreement, without calling it that.
Under pressure from the FDP, however, they had to be content with placing the citizen's income in the tradition of the existing basic security (formerly: Hartz IV).
Ironically, the FDP saved the remnants of the red-green “Agenda 2010”, but had to accept that tortuous prose points in the opposite direction.
This included, among other things, the moratorium on sanctions that had already been decided and the "period of trust" without obligations.
However, the recalculation of the standard rates has become the real point of contention in the coalition.
Lindner: Not without sanctions
Even before Heil announced his resulting balancing act on Wednesday, the FDP chairman, Finance Minister Christian Lindner, stated: sanctions must remain in place and the standard rates must not be increased blindly.
Linking them to inflation sounds obvious, but misses the point.
Basic security also includes housing benefit and the reimbursement of heating costs, currently one of the biggest drivers of inflation.
The federal and local governments will still have to pay high costs because they have to pay the gas bills in these cases.
It would be much more important to support the citizens who have worked their way out of basic security and will soon have to fear having less than citizen income.