German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has indicated that the country could add further flexibility to its retirement age in a bid to attract migrant workers.

Scholz’s remarks came at the BDA employers’ association conference earlier this week, where he extolled the idea that Germany’s economic growth needs to be charged — a development, he implied, would only be possible with the migration of skilled foreign workers to its soils.

According to Reuters, Scholz’s remarks in Berlin also took aim at the EU’s red tape, inflation, high interest rates, and geopolitical conflicts.

Scholz said: “The economy is stagnating. The bad mood is doing the rest. We need to get out of this bad situation together.”

While Scholz advocated for bringing more skilled workers into the job market, he also mentioned creating more flexibility with working hours and the pension age. However, there is a typical German dearth of detail as to what these flexibilities might entail.

Currently, Germany is pushing the retirement age back gradually from 65 to 67. It is also looking to improve its second- and third-pillar pension segments. There are, according to the EC, provisions for early pensions from the age of 63, providing you have 35 years of contributions. Given how generous the state pension is and its current cost to the government, any idea of introducing flexibility into it seems more wishful thinking than concrete policy.

Scholz’s remarks came as US President, Joe Biden, made a visit this week to Berlin and against the backdrop of Germany’s faltering economy. The International Monetary Fund said a few days ago that the country’s economy would grow by only 0.2 per cent this year, making it one of the worst performers in Europe.

Earlier this week, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Robert Habeck, laid out his own plan to boost the economy through an investment fund that aims to tap into the potential of small- and medium-sized businesses.

Under Habeck’s proposal, the government will create a new fund that seeks to use both public and private funds to help restructure Germany’s economy to be more climate-friendly and carbon-neutral. Key to this will be an ‘investment premium’ of 10% for all companies within the fund. This will be offset against its tax liability.

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