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The
head of the panel, Christiane Schönefeld, said it faced “a
particular challenge this year in view of the stagnating economy
and the uncertain forecasts.” She said it conducted “very
difficult talks, which were complicated further by the
expectations expressed in public.”
Germany, which has Europe's biggest economy, has had a national
minimum wage since 2015. It was introduced at the insistence of
the center-left Social Democrats, who were then — as they are
now now — the junior partners in a conservative-led government.
It started off at 8.50 euros per hour, but the independent
commission reviews its level regularly. There has been one
political intervention, however: under then-Chancellor Olaf
Scholz, a Social Democrat, the government in 2022 ordered an
increase to 12 euros an hour, fulfilling a campaign pledge by
Scholz.
In their campaign for this year's election, the Social Democrats
called for an increase to 15 euros. New Chancellor Friedrich
Merz's conservative bloc strongly opposed another
government-ordered raise.
Labor Minister Bärbel Bas, a leading Social Democrat, said she
would implement the commission's proposal. She said she “can
live well with it.”
“Of course we wanted more for people in this country,” she told
reporters. But she praised the panel for reaching consensus on
an increase, “because it looked for a long time as though we
wouldn't get an agreement at all, and then of course we would
have had to talk in the coalition about how to deal with this.”
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