Germany in 2024 has a series of interesting fringe parties dotted around the greyish, boring mass of mainstream politics. Move outside of the CDU, the SPD, the CSU, and the Greens, and you begin to abut the far-right AfD and the far-left Die Linke.

And then there is Sahra Wagenknecht, who left Die Linke at the end of last year to form what translates as ‘The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – Reason and Justice’. The alliance contested its first elections earlier this year, winning 6.1 per cent of European Parliament votes in June, and then 11 per cent to 16 per cent in state elections in Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg (the band of green that surrounds entirely Berlin).

Wagenknecht has bounced around politics in Germany for a long time, always on the left side of the political spectrum. As Politico pointed out a year ago, she now ranks amongst the country’s top politicians.

Interestingly, Politico places her politics alongside those of the reprehensible AfD, saying: “Like the AfD, she accuses the German government of catering to urban elites and ignoring the concerns of rural voters. She also rails against the ruling coalition’s attempts to hasten the green energy transition — or, as she called it today, ‘blind, unplanned eco-activism’ — by pushing through new rules on how Germans heat their homes.”

Politico added: “At the same time, Wagenknecht has also called for curbs on asylum seekers entering the country, and has railed against the German government’s support for Ukraine, demanding a halt to weapons shipments and the renewal of close relations with Moscow.”

It is important to note that the Wagenknecht Alliance takes an opposite stance to the Afd on race politics, writing: “We want to revive democratic decision-making, expand democratic co-determination, and protect personal freedom. We reject right-wing extremist, racist, and violent ideologies of any kind.”

Wagenknecht’s policies have been described as ‘populist’. The Wagenknecht Alliance says that the party’s policies are ‘oriented towards the common good’.

According to her own website, Wagenknecht’s party stands on a position of "a return of reason to politics".

“Germany,” she says, “needs a strong, innovative economy, and social justice, peace, and fair trade, respect for the individual freedom of its citizens and an open culture of discussion.”

On pensions, Wagenknecht says, “Millions of older people cannot enjoy their retirement after a long working life because their pensions are humiliatingly low.”

One of Wagenknecht’s most interesting protestations about pensions in Germany recently has been the call to end tax liability for nearly all pensioners.

According to SPIEGEL, one of Germany’s leading news sources, Wagenknecht said back in March that those receiving €2,000 a month or less should be exempt from taxation. The SPIEGEL report indicates that 17 per cent of men and 2.5 per cent of women receive €1,800 a month or more, with a further 6 per cent and 0.5 per cent receiving upwards of €2,100 a month.

Currently, SPIEGEL said that retirees with a net pension of €1,300 a month will pay €127 a year to the tax authorities, rising to €463 a year when receiving €1,500 a month and €1,098 a year when receiving €1,800 a month.

Being Germany, they had to make this more complicated, too. If you had been retired by 2015 and are receiving €1,300 a month, there is no income tax. And future tax burdens on future pensioners are set to grow.

Before 2004, public pensions in Germany were largely free of tax. That changed following a 2002 ruling from the Federal Constitutional Court that said public pensions were being favoured over those of civil servants — which were liable for full taxation.

"It is absurd to tax the pension level that is already far too low even further," Wagenknecht has said.

Wagenknecht has looked over the border to Austria and its pension system, citing it as a model for Germany to take on. The news site t-online posits that the average pension there is worth around €1,000 a month more per male pensioner than in Germany. For women, it is about €500.

But as t-online has pointed out, there are significant differences between the two nations: the contribution rate in Austria is over four percentage points higher (22.8 per cent to 18.6 per cent), and employers there pay a higher share of the pension contribution.

Wagenknecht is a populist, but she is also a populist that has said little about the role of third-pillar pensions within Germany. The role of supporting pensions in what is still Europe’s largest economy, it seems, is still that of the first pillar—or the state. The precise thing that Wagenknecht and her allies are aimed against.

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