Germany’s far left saves Merz from potential humiliation on pensions
The Left party’s decision to abstain from a vote on pensions bails Merz out of an immediate political mess that threatened to undermine his coalition.
BERLIN — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative-led coalition received an unsolicited political lifeline from an unlikely place — but it comes at a cost.
Germany’s far-left Die Linke ― The Left ― party on Wednesday announced that its lawmakers will abstain from a vote on a pension package set for Friday, a move that effectively assures the package will pass and potentially saves Merz from a humiliation that would have further undermined his already-weak coalition government.
The announcement from far-left leaders came as Merz was attempting to quell a rebellion by 18 young lawmakers inside his own conservative bloc who argue that current pension benefits aren’t sustainable. Because Merz’s coalition has a narrow parliamentary majority of only 12 votes, passage of the pension package had remained in doubt.
The Left’s leaders said they were acting not to help the coalition, but rather to protect pensioners from cuts.
Conservatives “have been playing power games at the expense of millions of pensioners across the country,” The Left’s parliamentary group leader Heidi Reichinnek said in a statement. “It is absolutely disgraceful that the conservative bloc does not even allow pensioners to have butter on their bread.”
The Left’s decision to abstain bails Merz out of an immediate political mess that casted doubt on the ability of his coalition — an ideologically divergent alliance between Merz’s conservatives and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — to pass key legislation just several months after taking office.
At the same time, The Left’s unsolicited help is an embarrassment of its own kind, creating the politically damaging impression that Merz’s coalition required the support of far-left foes his party views as too radical to work with.
Should The Left’s 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.
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.
