Erfurt (dpa/th) – The Thuringian SPD chairman Georg Maier has again campaigned for the federal hardship fund for low-income pensioners to be increased with state funds. “We should provide the around 33 million euros needed to double the one-off payment from 2,500 euros to 5,000 euros in the 2023 budget,” said Maier on Wednesday, according to the announcement. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has already announced that it intends to proceed in this way. He supports this path of the local Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig (SPD), said Maier.
The federal cabinet recently launched the fund, which is intended to benefit 180,000 to 190,000 needy pensioners who are on the poverty line. These include East Germans with claims from GDR times as well as Jewish quota refugees and late resettlers.
The background is above all a decades-long dispute over certain pension entitlements from the GDR era, which were not transferred to the federal German system in 1991. Affected are, for example, supplementary pensions for former employees of the Reichsbahn or Post as well as entitlements of women who were divorced in GDR times.
The decision was a compromise, he would have liked more, said Maier. But there is “finally” a solution to the issue – he is therefore promoting agreeing to the compromise and getting a quick implementation on the way.
The prime ministers of the eastern German federal states will meet on Thursday, and the hardship fund will be a topic at the meeting.
