More Light or More Shadow? Critical Comments on Statutory Pension Performance Improvement Legislation

In this article Eckart Bomsdorf, University of Köln, outlines his position on the German federal government’s statutory pension reform plans. In his opinion the reform bill has both positive aspects like, for example, the pension for reduced earnings capacity, and contradictory elements like the so-called pension at 63 years of age. The state pension fund’s full coffers are tempting the government to be overly generous. This overlooks the fact that the statutory pension insurance scheme will be subject to long-term burdens, and that the state pension fund ’s savings can only be spent once.