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Flood damage in the Ahr Valley (in July 2021)
Photo: Christoph Hardt / Future Image / IMAGO
The SPD wants to oblige insurance companies to offer insurance against natural hazards for every residential building.
The calculation of the premium amount and the scope of benefits should be required by law.
This emerges from a position paper by right-wing politicians from the SPD, which the Bundestag parliamentary group wants to decide on in the coming week of the meeting.
The six-page paper is available to SPIEGEL.
Accordingly, not even every second property in Germany is insured against extreme weather events.
In flood disasters such as those in the Ahr Valley or recently in Lower Saxony, the state often has to step in.
Particularly in areas with a higher risk, “insurance against natural hazards is only offered at high premiums, if at all,” says the paper.
“Take advantage of the fact that 99 percent have home insurance”
The authors propose a mandatory system like in France.
There, natural hazard insurance, in addition to that for residential buildings, costs 26 euros per year.
A requirement for calculating insurance premiums is nothing new in Germany, Johannes Fechner, parliamentary director of the SPD parliamentary group, told SPIEGEL.
In the area of private health insurance, there are also detailed requirements as to which services can be offered at which premiums.
“We want to take advantage of the fact that 99 percent of all properties in Germany have residential building insurance,” Fechner continued.
It should not be the case that “in disasters that take place before elections, citizens are compensated, but those affected in flood disasters are left empty-handed without the political pressure of an election.”
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