{"id":297364,"date":"2025-12-03T20:42:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T20:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/297364\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T20:42:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T20:42:09","slug":"germanys-far-left-saves-merz-from-potential-humiliation-on-pensions-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/297364\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s far left saves Merz from potential humiliation on pensions \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Left\u2019s leaders said they were acting not to help the coalition, but rather to protect pensioners from cuts.<\/p>\n<p>Conservatives \u201chave been playing power games at the expense of millions of pensioners across the country,\u201d The Left\u2019s parliamentary group leader Heidi Reichinnek said in a statement. \u201cIt is absolutely disgraceful that the conservative bloc does not even allow pensioners to have butter on their bread.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Left\u2019s decision to abstain bails Merz out of an immediate political mess that casted doubt on the ability of his coalition \u2014 an ideologically divergent alliance between Merz\u2019s conservatives and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) \u2014\u00a0to pass key legislation just several months after taking office.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"689\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GettyImages-2248966006-1024x689.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7601895\"  \/>Johannes Winkel, a young conservative lawmaker, said in an online post that he intended to vote against the pension package on Friday. | John Macdougal\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, The Left\u2019s unsolicited help is an embarrassment of its own kind, creating the politically damaging impression that Merz\u2019s coalition required the support of far-left foes his party views as too radical to work with.<\/p>\n<p>Should The Left\u2019s 64 lawmakers follow through on the vow to abstain in the Bundestag on Friday, it will bring down overall number of votes coalition lawmakers need to pass the pension legislation, providing indirect help.<\/p>\n<p>In a kind of face-saving measure, conservative leaders continue to try to secure support of the young conservative rebels for the pension package. Yet, on Wednesday, it was still unclear whether the effort would bear fruit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Left\u2019s leaders said they were acting not to help the coalition, but rather to protect pensioners from&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,5704,817,4176,2794,145,2924,2363,423,4178,4174,4175,154,56,54,158,55,161],"class_list":{"0":"post-297364","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-conflict","10":"tag-cooperation","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-friedrich-merz","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-labor","15":"tag-negotiations","16":"tag-parliament","17":"tag-pensions","18":"tag-personal-finance","19":"tag-personalfinance","20":"tag-russia","21":"tag-uk","22":"tag-united-kingdom","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-unitedkingdom","25":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}