Being a cabinet minister in Germany is nice work, if you can get it. ’Tis the season to be jolly!

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from the online news portal Nius. The translator’s comments are in square brackets:

Big jump in pensions: Why all government ministers want to hold on right now

On St. Nicholas Day, the ministers of the traffic light government will certainly put out their boots*, because just two days later, in addition to chocolate, nuts and tangerines, a whole lot of tax money may rain in…

After the government’s debt tricks, which resulted in a devastating ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court, Germany is deep in a financial crisis: the 2023 budget is blocked, as are shadow budgets worth tens of billions of euros.

More and more people are asking themselves: Why doesn’t anyone in charge take the consequences of this misery and resign? One reason could be that December 8th is a date with gold in the mouth for ministers. [Anyone that asks such a stupid question deserves what they get.]

Hold on, wait, collect retirement money

On December 8th, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), his head of the Chancellery Wolfgang Schmidt and the 15 ministers will have been in office for exactly two years. On this very day they will have accumulated enough service time to have a pension of €4,660 per month safely in their pockets.

Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) is already in his second term in office — he would receive a pension of €5,460 per month from December 8th. Family Minister Lisa Paus (Greens) would have to be patient until April; she only took over from Anne Spiegel on April 25, 2022.

Paragraph 15 of the Federal Ministerial Act states that a former member of the federal government is entitled to a pension “if he or she has been a member of the federal government for at least four years” — but in reality, after two years, a so-called “legal fiction” that automatically applies from two years four years and therefore 4660 euros per month.

The law further states: “If the term of office is terminated […] and an uninterrupted membership in the federal government of more than two years, this is considered a term of office of four years.” If you leave early before the age of standard working hours, there is a maximum of a deduction of 14.4% allowed.

Pre-Christmas cash register ringing

In 2020, the FDP — then in opposition — wanted to remove this passage: “This is not about questioning the work performance of the federal ministers,” said the then parliamentary group deputy and current parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr . But it should “apply just as it does to all other people who work: pension rights must be based on the length of service.”

The draft amendment to the law was rejected with the votes of all other parliamentary groups. In 16 days the pain will not be too great for the FDP, because then the cash register will ring. If the traffic light manages to last that long…

Afterword from the translator:

Even after this deadline, things will continue in the tried and tested manner. Who wants to give up benefits and privileges?

Anyone who watched pigs eating at the feeding troughs on the farm as a child will know it.

These people should lose ALL privileges and pensions for what they have done. Pensioners who had to work for 45 years are getting a pittance that won’t even cover the costs of care in an old-age home should the need arise, and in comparison these parasites after two years rake in more than three times in pensions, while never even having had to pay into the pension fund in the first place. No wonder they get along so well with all the other parasites they’ve been importing wholesale, and all parasites eventually will kill the host they’re feeding on; it’s embedded in their self-destructing DNA.

There should be a law that cannot be changed, in which a politician loses all benefits if he or she or it acts against the interest of the country and it’s indigenous population. Technically, each and every politician from recent decades should by right dangle at the end of a rope for what they’ve done.