With a renewed commitment to preserving and strengthening the welfare state, the SPD aims to sharpen its political profile. During a two-day retreat at the party’s headquarters in Berlin, the SPD executive board over the weekend launched work on a new policy program and adopted policy papers on health, tax, and foreign policy. Among other points, the SPD is calling for a fundamental shift in the financing of the healthcare system in order to broaden the pool of contributors.
According to the SPD’s proposal, health insurance contributions should no longer be levied solely on wages, but also on other forms of income, such as capital gains or rental income. In addition, the SPD wants fewer civil servants in the future: new appointments to civil servant status should be limited to core sovereign functions.
As another building block for financing the welfare state, the SPD is calling for mandatory pension insurance to be extended to civil servants, the self-employed, and elected officials. “A solidarity-based pension system must include all working people in the long term. Whoever works, pays in,” the executive board’s resolution states.
Co-party leader Bärbel Bas said on the sidelines of the retreat that her party considers modernizing the welfare state a “central task.” “The welfare state determines whether people have trust in our democracy,” she said. “We do not want isolated adjustments, but long-term and fundamental reforms that make the welfare state more capable of taking action as a whole.”
In a keynote address at the start of the retreat on Saturday, Bas also drew a clear line between the SPD and its coalition partner, the Union, which advocates limiting welfare spending. The welfare state is often “defamed as a brake on economic growth in the current debate, although the opposite is true,” Bas said.
She criticized proposals that have recently also come from within the ranks of the coalition partner CDU, such as restricting part-time work or introducing private long-term care provisions. “All of this is a wrecking ball for workers’ rights,” the SPD leader said. These were proposals “without respect for the problems of completely ordinary people in this country.”
Co-party leader Lars Klingbeil, in his speech, focused on the global political situation. He warned of an “end of the liberal era.” In a world where strength and power dominate politics, Germany must strengthen its alliances and work even more closely with Europe, the European economic area must awaken from its “Sleeping Beauty slumber.”
In a resolution, the SPD executive board calls for a reassessment of Germany’s relationship with the United States. While Germany should continue to pursue close transatlantic relations, doubts about the reliability of the current US administration mean that other alliances must be strengthened.
Klingbeil announced that the SPD will place greater emphasis on the value of “public goods” and “collective infrastructure.” He cited examples such as affordable housing, medical care, roads and public transport, parks, and community centers. He said the SPD had in the past “talked too much about individualization and too little about collective infrastructure.”
In a policy paper adopted on Sunday, the SPD executive board demanded that large fortunes contribute more to financing the common good. “Inequality and tax injustice create anger,” the paper states. It is a problem when large parts of society possess little or no wealth. To change this, the tax system is a key instrument: “Those who have more can and should contribute more.”
The current SPD policy program dates from 2007. The new one is scheduled for completion in 2027. Struggling with persistently weak polling numbers, the SPD aims to link its traditional priorities, work, education, and fairness, with the major challenges of the new era: artificial intelligence, a shifting world
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