Martin Schirdewan & Matthias W.

BirkwaldOne in five pensioners in the EU is at risk of poverty. Companies and the FDP want to raise the retirement age. There is a threat of an avalanche of old-age poverty. Even today, many people have to collect bottles to make ends meet after a lifetime of work. This is undignified. The price increases have put many pensioners in need. We oppose this policy! We are fighting for an effective compensation of inflation for pensions. Pensions must not be used for speculation on the financial markets throughout Europe, and pension benefits must not be dependent on share prices. We want a Europe-wide minimum pension that guarantees that all people are safe from poverty in old age. It must be above the at-risk-of-poverty threshold of the country in question. It should be income and asset tested. The statutory pension must safeguard the standard of living achieved during working life throughout Europe. We also demand that low pensions be raised until they provide reliable protection against poverty (solidarity-based minimum pension). European pension funds are among the largest investors in fossil fuels in the world. Through the expansion of funded pension schemes, they have become return-driven investors who are not only harmful to the environment, but also risky. We want to reduce the power of pension funds by strengthening statutory and pay-as-you-go pension funds across Europe. The Left Party Pension Package - Concept to Strengthen the Statutory Pension in the CountryThe traffic light government leaves pensions as bad as they are! It has recognised that the level of pensions must not be allowed to fall any further. We on the left, together with the trade unions and social associations, have been putting pressure on this for years. The SPD and the Greens have let the pension level fall from 53 to 48 percent. In the future, they will only mitigate a problem that they themselves had previously created. Agenda 2010 weakened the statutory pension in favour of the Riester pension. The bill was paid by pensioners and employees, who have to pay more as a result. Only employers and the insurance industry were pleased. We on the left know that pensions are currently far too low, because 42 percent of pensioners have a total net income of less than 1250 euros, the poverty threshold of the European Union (EU-SILC), as a recent survey by Dr. Dietmar Bartsch, a member of the Bundestag, at the Federal Statistical Office showed. This also includes income from company pensions and private pensions. So the traffic light can't excuse itself by saying that pensioners still have a company pension or a private pension plan. The Riester pension has failed, and the spread of company pensions is faltering. Only 18 percent of people have entitlements from all three layers of old-age provision, i.e. statutory pension insurance, company pension schemes or company pension schemes, and private pension schemes. The so-called three-pillar or three-layer model has currently failed. Many women and many people in the new federal states have (almost) only a statutory pension and nothing else. So many people are dependent on the state pension and that is why we need to strengthen it again. We say: Instead of old-age poverty: pensions up! Our current motion on "Strengthening the Statutory Pension" (Dr.: 20/10477) will be finally discussed in plenary in the coming session week, on 16.05.24. Pensions in the east and in the nationwide low-wage sector should be given particular attention. Our motion "Securing pensions in the East – Maintaining the conversion of wages in the East until 2030" (Dr.: 20/11150) will therefore soon be read in the Bundestag. Regarding the share pension: The Left Party rejects the integration of the capital market into the statutory pension. The draft law on the Pension Package II shows that the "generational capital" will hardly bring anything to future pensioners. According to the current plans, 200 billion euros are to be paid into the fund financed by loans – i.e. on credit! So far, however, only a reduction in contribution rates of 0.3 percentage points for 2040 and 0.4 percentage points for 2045 can be expected. In current values, this means a saving of 5.67 euros per month or 7.56 euros for average earners. These are currently just two and a half Kölsch and three and a half Kölsch respectively. Absurd! And hundreds of billions of euros in loans are to be taken out for this purpose. The so-called "intergenerational capital" does not guarantee "intergenerational justice". The yielder