BERLIN (dpa-AFX) – The Left parliamentary group has decided to abstain from the vote on the controversial pension package, thereby making it significantly easier for the law to be passed with the coalition’s votes. If all 64 MPs from the Left faction actually abstain, the required majority would shrink to 284 votes if all other MPs were present. The coalition has 328 in the Bundestag and would therefore have a comfortable buffer of 44 votes.
The reason for this is that abstentions are not counted when calculating a simple majority in the Bundestag. So only the yes votes are counted against the no votes. The SPD parliamentary group leadership is assuming unanimous support from the 120 Social Democratic MPs. At the Union parliamentary group meeting there were 10 to 20 votes against and around a handful of abstentions in a test vote on Tuesday. But these would be manageable if the left abstained.
The parliamentary group leader Heidi Reichinnek explained the voting behavior in a written statement. “We will not accept that pension levels will be further depressed and have therefore decided as a group to abstain from the vote on the government’s pension package, which is expected to take place on Friday,” she explained. “We will therefore not fail to stabilize the pension level.”
The controversial pension package from the Union and SPD is to be voted on in the Bundestag on Friday./mfi/DP/nas