STUTTGART (dpa-AFX) – The labor ministers of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein are taking a stand against the traffic light coalition’s citizen benefit plans. In a key issues paper that is available to the German Press Agency in Stuttgart, the ministers are particularly bothered by the regulations on a two-year waiting period during which assets should not be examined and touched unless they exceed a so-called protective asset of a maximum of 60,000 euros. The Union sits in government in the four countries.
“A family of four could theoretically live in a condominium at the expense of taxpayers and have up to 150,000 euros on the high edge,” says the paper. In addition, a single person without children can own a 140 square meter house in the best residential area with a market value of up to seven figures and does not have to use it to secure his own livelihood according to the traffic light plans.
The planned changes prevent the incentive to take up work quickly and will hardly be understood by those who have to work in order to be able to pay for their housing, especially since they finance it through their taxes, the ministers criticize.
The traffic light parties are currently arguing with the CDU and CSU about the introduction of citizen income on January 1st. The second reading of the traffic light plans will take place in the Bundestag on Thursday. There the traffic light parties have the majority. However, the citizens’ income could fail in the Bundesrat. With the reform, the federal government wants to replace the Hartz IV system. From the point of view of the CDU and CSU, however, the citizen’s income sets the wrong incentives./poi/DP/jha