Social affairs - Hardship fund for ethnic German repatriates and quota refugees
Presumably around 4,500 ethnic German repatriates and 4,900 Jewish "contingent refugees" from the former Soviet Union could receive money from a hardship fund for pensioners in Hesse. This estimate by a federal-state working group was made by the Hessian Minister of Social Affairs Kai Klose (Greens) in response to a question from the SPD parliamentary group in the Wiesbaden state parliament. In addition, there are needy East Germans with outstanding pension entitlements from the GDR era.
The traffic light coalition in Berlin had set up the hardship fund at the beginning of 2023 and budgeted 500 million euros. One-off payments of at least 2,500 euros are possible. When a joint pension system was set up after German reunification, some pension entitlements from the GDR era were not taken into account. These include certain supplementary pensions, for example for former employees of the Reichsbahn or the post office, as well as entitlements for women who divorced during the GDR era. According to the Federal Ministry of Social Affairs, the application deadline for these one-off payments is to be extended until January 31, 2024.
State Social Affairs Minister Klose rejected direct participation by the state of Hesse in the hardship fund: "The federal government has exclusive responsibility for statutory pension insurance law." According to Klose, participation by the federal states in voluntary federal benefits in an area for which Berlin alone is responsible would risk "becoming a precedent for further future demands from the federal government". Ultimately, with certain payments, the federal states are already indirectly contributing to access to the labor market and old-age security for ethnic German repatriates and Jews from the former Soviet Union. According to the Minister of Social Affairs, 800,000 euros are available annually for late repatriates in Hesse's budget.
Klose also considers the federal government's fund solution to be "unsustainable". Margarete Ziegler-Raschdorf, the State Commissioner for Expellees and Ethnic German Resettlers, had considered at least 9,000 to 10,000 euros to be necessary as a one-off payment "to satisfy the claims of those affected". The payment of 2500 euros envisaged by the federal government for these pensioners was too low - as was a sum increased to 5000 euros in federal states that joined a hardship fund foundation. However, according to Klose, the Hessian state government fundamentally supports the goal of "creating compensation for immigrant Jews from the former Soviet Union and ethnic German repatriates".
Hardship fund
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Source: www.stern.de
