Hannibal Hanschke / EPA
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz
The Left party’s decision to abstain in the vote on pensions takes Merz out of a political mess that threatened to further weaken his coalition.
The German Chancellor’s conservative-led coalition Friedrich Merz received an unexpected balloon of political oxygen from an unlikely side — but one that comes with costs.
The far-left party The left (“The Left”) announced on Wednesday that its deputies will abstain in the vote on a pension package scheduled for this Friday, guaranteeing in practice the approval of the diploma and, potentially, sparing Merz to a humiliation that would have further undermined the already fragile government coalition.
The announcement by far-left leaders came at a time when Merz was trying to stop a rebellion of 18 young deputiess within your own conservative benchwho argue that the current level of benefits is not sustainable.
As the Merz coalition has a very narrow parliamentary majoritywith just 12 votes, the approval of the pension package was in doubt. The leaders of A Esquerda claim that are not taking action to help the coalition, but rather to protect pensioners from cuts.
The conservativeshave been playing power games at the expense of millions of pensioners across the country”, he accused Heidi Reichinnekleader of the A Esquerda bench, in a statement. “It is absolutely disgraceful that the Conservative bloc does not even allow pensioners to have butter on their bread.”
The party’s decision to abstain gets Merz out of an immediate political jam which had cast doubt on the capacity of his coalition, an ideologically heterogeneous alliance between Merz’s conservatives and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — to pass crucial legislation few months after taking office.
At the same time, the unsolicited help from The Left creates a new embarrassment, by feeding the politically harmful idea that Merz’s coalition needed indirect support from a far-left opponent that his party considers[…] too radical for any understanding.
If the 64 deputies of A Esquerda fulfill their promise to abstain in this Friday’s vote in the Bundestag, the total number of votes the coalition needs to pass pension legislation will be reduced, thus offering indirect help.
To save faceconservative leaders continue to try to guarantee the rebel youth support for pension package. But as of Wednesday, it remained unclear whether these efforts would bear fruit.
Johannes Winkela young Conservative MP, wrote in an online post that he plans to vote against the package on Friday.
“Germany urgently needs reformsbecause demographic change will have an unprecedented impact on public finances,” he said. “Intergenerational justice finally requires concrete decisions rather than merely symbolic policy.”
