German chancellor Friedrich Merz saw off a parliamentary rebellion on Friday and narrowly held his coalition together in a controversial pensions vote, after two months of bad-tempered debate.
Younger MPs within Merz’s own centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) had threatened to torpedo what they called an unaffordable Bill to fix state pensions at 48 per cent of previous income.
On Friday, the Merz coalition scraped together a majority of 318 Bundestag MPs in favour of the Bill - just two votes more than at the CDU-lead coalition’s disposal.
Seven younger CDU members voted against the Bill, the rump of a once 18-strong rebel group. Two CDU parliamentarians abstained and a further MP was absent.
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CDU leader Merz talked up the result as the opening shot in a reform plan to make Germany’s welfare system “affordable, strong and generationally just”.
“This is not the end of our pension [reform] politics but just the beginning,” he said.
Vice-chancellor Lars Klingbeil, head of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) coalition partner, said the “clear result” would “ensure that millions of pensioners will get an adequate pension”.
Without this pension agreement, SPD leaders had called into question the future of the coalition after just six months in office.
Just 597 out of the 630 sitting MPs participated in Friday’s vote. Some 224 MPs opposed and 53 abstained, largely from the opposition Left party.
[ German vote exposes Merz weakness and some CDU members’ far-right ambitionsOpens in new window ]
It instructed its MPs to abstain to lower the majority required to pass the pensions Bill.
Taken together, a majority of 266 would have carried the Bill. But Merz, aware his authority was at stake, warned backbenchers the Bill needed to pass with the government’s own - so-called “chancellor” - majority.
Not all younger CDU MPs heeded that warning. Pascal Reddig, 30-year-old chair of the CDU’s youth wing in parliament, refused to back a Bill that “goes against my fundamental beliefs, against why I do politics and against intergenerational justice”.
In addition to its multi-billion Bill, younger CDU politicians said the pension Bill pre-empted pension reform recommendations from a state commission, due next year.
Though a victory for Merz, observers suggested Friday’s vote sent worrying signals about discipline in the CDU parliamentary party – and the priorities of Merz’s Bundestag floor leader Jens Spahn.
“It’s not a good sign if a ruling party cannot summon its full majority in an existential moment,” said Dr Gero Neugebauer, a Berlin political scientist. “And in Spahn, Merz has someone who is thinking more about his own ambitions than the party.”
Also on Friday, the Bundestag backed plans for voluntary physicals for young men from next January.
Part of an armed forces overhaul, the vote triggered protests around the country, with school pupils skipping lessons to protest against the plan.
