Petition richtet sich an: Federal Minister of Finance Lars Klingbeil, Federal Minister for Labour Bärbel Bas, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Katharina Reiche, Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz

The German government plans to introduce the active pension on January, 1st 2026. Anyone who exceeds the standard retirement age (66 years and four months) will in future be able to earn an additional 2,000 Euro per month tax-free. Instead of raising the retirement age, the massive tax savings of up to 919 Euro per month are intended to provide a positive incentive to work longer. This is fundamentally welcome.

However, this unusually high tax break will only apply to employees, not the self-employed. According to the current draft law on active pensions dated October, 9th 2025, this is because they would continue to work anyway: ‘There is currently no need for further incentives ... to encourage this group of people to continue working.’

Blatant unequal Treatment of the Self-Employed and Employees
In our view, this is a blatant violation of Article 3 of the Grundgesetz (German constitution), the ‘principle of equal treatment’. It is one of many instances of discrimination against self-employed people. However, the unfair treatment is particularly obvious in this case and has the potential to massively increase the already existing discontent, effectively ‘pushing things over the edge’. Hard-working self-employed people perceive the reasoning as cynical and a slap in the face. At the same time, however, it is also misguided in terms of content and jeopardises the achievement of the German government's economic policy goals.

Our demand: Active pension for the self-employed too

We demand the introduction of a fair active pension for employees AND the self-employed. Only in this way will the active pension provide a powerful stimulus for the German economy.
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The Self-employed are not Second-class Workers
Many people continue to work on a self-employed basis after reaching retirement age, and they do so for a variety of reasons: many employees and civil servants want to finally work according to their own quality standards and decide for themselves when and how much they work. Many self-employed people continue to work for a limited period of time: due to a lack of successors, because their services are urgently needed – and simply because they enjoy their work and the social contacts. A minority of self-employed people (and employees) have to continue working in old age for financial reasons.

The Draft Law is Riddled with Contradictions
The latter subgroup highlights the inherent contradictions in the draft law: for years, the federal government has assumed that self-employed people are at particularly high risk of poverty in old age, only to now exclude them from tax breaks under the active pension scheme.

Equally contradictory is the argument that the active pension should only benefit pensioners who are required to pay into the statutory social security systems. According to Section 2 of the German Social Security Code VI (SGB VI), many self-employed people are also subject to pension insurance (e.g. self-employed teachers and educators, carers, midwives, physiotherapists, artists and publicists, and self-employed people in a position similar to that of employees).

Why are they excluded from the active pension, even though they have been paying pension insurance and other social security contributions for decades – and at a significantly higher rate than comparable employees and their employers combined?

Self-employed People also Perform Active Work!
Another reason given for excluding self-employed people is that the active pension is only intended to promote ‘active work’. Active work refers to activities in which income is generated through personal work performance. This implies that self-employed persons live off passive income, e.g. capital gains and rental income. However, these are not eligible for the active pension anyway. The vast majority of self-employed people do not employ any workers in their old age who would ‘do their work for them’. Self-employed people, who are just now being portrayed as precarious, are suddenly being portrayed as beneficiaries of passive income!

One 'Special Sacrifice’ Follows Another
The Scientific Service of the German Bundestag writes that the planned active pension could be constitutional if the legislature can demonstrate ‘its suitability and necessity for overriding public welfare objectives’ that justify a special sacrifice by disadvantaged groups. The same argument was used to impose extensive special sacrifices on the self-employed during the coronavirus pandemic (through bans on working without effective compensation). For many, this led to insolvency or the loss of a significant portion of their retirement savings.

The exclusion of self-employed people from an active pension is not only deeply unfair, contradictory and, in view of the serious encroachment on fundamental rights, extremely questionable from a constitutional point of view. It is also counterproductive in terms of economic policy.