Starting next year, parents of newborns in Germany will no longer need to file an application to receive Kindergeld, the country's child benefit payment. Federal Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD) introduced the corresponding draft law in the Bundestag today. Klingbeil expects the reform to eliminate approximately 300,000 Kindergeld applications per year. He described it as a change that "sounds very small at first, but will improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of families in our country."
According to the minister, new parents have far more important things to focus on after the birth of a child than dealing with paperwork and government offices. "Parents will receive child benefit automatically in the future, they will receive it without bureaucracy, and they will receive it quickly," Klingbeil said. The message, he added, was clear: "More time for the baby instead of tiresome bureaucracy."
The law follows what is known as the "once-only" principle: citizen data that the state already holds should not need to be submitted repeatedly by individuals. Instead, it can be used across different government services, reducing the burden on families and streamlining public administration.
Following today's plenary debate, the Bundestag referred the bill to the relevant parliamentary committees for further deliberation. According to the Federal Finance Ministry, the law will be implemented in two stages next year once it has been passed.
In the first phase, expected to begin around March 2027, child benefit for any additional child of parents who already have at least one older child will be paid out automatically. The payment will go to the person who currently receives the Kindergeld for the older sibling. In the second phase, expected around November 2027, first-born children will also be covered by the automatic payment system.
For parents of first-born children to qualify for the automatic payout, at least one parent must live together with the child in Germany, the family benefits office (Familienkasse) must have an IBAN bank account number on file for at least one parent, and at least one parent must be employed in Germany.
The minister emphasised that the family benefits office would continue to verify whether parents are entitled to child benefit, just as before. However, going forward, the necessary information will come from other government agencies. "The state uses the data it already has," he said.
According to the Federal Tax Office, the process works as follows: Federal Central Tax Office assigns a tax identification number to every newborn. It receives the birth notification from the civil registry offices via the registration authorities. It then informs the family benefits office about the birth of the child. For automatic payment, only a valid IBAN bank account number is needed.
Once a bank account is on file, the payout can begin, the ministry said. Child benefit is paid to one parent. Until now, parents have had to specify which one. Under the new application-free system for first-born children, the Familienkasse will make the selection: if only one parent's IBAN is known, that parent receives the payment. If both IBANs are on file, the benefit will initially be paid to the mother.
According to the Finance Ministry, experience has shown that roughly 75 percent of Kindergeld recipients are female. However, parents are free to choose a different arrangement and notify the Familienkasse accordingly.
The automatic disbursement of Kindergeld was agreed upon in the coalition agreement and reflects a recommendation made by the Commission on Social Welfare Reform. Klingbeil told the Bundestag that the reform "saves a great deal of time, money, and also stress on all sides, including for the state."
The opposition in the Bundestag delivered mixed verdicts on Klingbeil's proposal. The Greens welcomed the move. "If child benefit in the future lands directly in parents' bank accounts without a thousand hoops to jump through, that will take a real burden off many families," said Greens co-leader Franziska Brantner.
Die Linke parliamentary group leader Heidi Reichinnek, however, criticised the bill as falling short. "Is this really supposed to be everything in the fight against child poverty?" she said. One in five children in the country is at risk of poverty, she added, and what is truly needed is a "real basic child security scheme."
AfD lawmaker Kay Gottschalk used his speech in the plenary session to broadly criticise the payment of social benefits to people from abroad. "It is downright absurd what is going on with our child benefit for foreigners," he said, adding that the costs had "completely spiralled out of control." Gottschalk criticised what he called the "subsidising of foreign recipients of Citizen's Benefit (Bürgergeld)."
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