{"id":170043,"date":"2025-12-05T20:42:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T20:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/170043\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T20:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T20:42:10","slug":"german-coalition-passes-disputed-pension-package-ending-rift-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/170043\/","title":{"rendered":"German coalition passes disputed pension package, ending rift \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThis is not the end of our pension policy,\u201d Merz said in a statement after the vote. \u201cIt\u2019s only the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this week, Germany\u2019s far-left Die Linke (The Left) party announced its lawmakers would abstain from the vote, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/germany-the-left-friedrich-merz-coalition-conservative-politics-law\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">effectively ensuring its passage<\/a> by reducing the overall number of votes needed to pass the pension legislation.<\/p>\n<p>Still, Merz continued to try to secure the support of young conservatives in order to avoid the politically damaging impression that his coalition was dependent on indirect far-left support to get the package over the line.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, only seven members of Merz\u2019s conservative bloc voted against the package, giving the conservative leader a so-called chancellor\u2019s majority.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the harder task of more comprehensive pension reform as early as next year now looms over the coalition government. Merz will have to balance the demands of his center-left coalition partners in the SPD to maintain many benefits, with young conservatives who believe current benefit levels cannot be sustained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThis is not the end of our pension policy,\u201d Merz said in a statement after the vote. \u201cIt\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,12706,1223,111,139,69,12613,244,245,2437],"class_list":{"0":"post-170043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-friedrich-merz","11":"tag-germany","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-pensions","16":"tag-personal-finance","17":"tag-personalfinance","18":"tag-security"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}