Preparations for the Wagenknecht party are underway. In terms of content, the former left-wing politician is sharpening her positions. When it comes to citizens’ money, she thinks certain sanctions are okay for young people.
On the way to her own party, the former left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht has, in her own words, collected hundreds of thousands of euros in donations. It’s “well beyond 100,000, not quite a million,” she said in an interview with the German Press Agency in Berlin. Wagenknecht ruled out the possibility that Russian money would flow to the planned party. This will be checked meticulously.
Wagenknecht left the Left in October and wants to found her own party in January. Critics accuse her of being close to the politics of Russian President Vladimir Putin, most recently CDU deputy leader Andreas Jung. Wagenknecht strictly rejects this. In the past, Russian financial aid to European opposition parties, such as the French Rassemblement National, had been reported. It recently became known that a German journalist was collecting high Russian fees.
When asked, Wagenknecht said she had never been offered money from Russia. “I wouldn’t let an American company buy me, or a Russian company, or a Saudi Arabian company, or whoever,” she said. “That’s not why I do politics and I don’t need it.”
Hope for a strong result in the European elections
With the new party, Wagenknecht is hoping for a double-digit result in the European elections in June, as is currently the case in surveys. “So if we are at roughly the same level in the European elections as we are now measured in the surveys, then I am convinced that the traffic light will reconsider whether it can continue to do politics like this,” she said. She once again accused the government of ignoring the interests and problems of many people.
If the yet-to-be-founded “Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht” party stood for election in the federal government, it would get 14 percent, according to a recent survey by the Insa research institute for “Bild am Sonntag”. Wagenknecht wants her party to score points with, among other things, economic and social policy and is campaigning for higher unemployment and pension insurance benefits – even if higher contributions would be due.
Citizens’ money “wrong approach”
The citizen’s money introduced in January, however, was “a wrong approach,” said Wagenknecht. “It’s not about citizens getting money, the very term is absurd.” Rather, older people in particular should be protected longer and better through unemployment insurance if they lose their jobs.
With a young person, on the other hand, “you can expect them to be very active in looking for work,” said Wagenknecht. “That brings us back to the education system. I think we need more money to train young people.” She added: “I would require people to do, for example, a qualification that is offered.” If this is rejected, “it is then appropriate that it be sanctioned accordingly.”
For questioning about the pension system
According to Wagenknecht’s assessment, people would be willing to pay higher pension contributions if this would ensure their standard of living in old age. Her suggestion: “You can ask people. Anyway, I think that we could use more elements of direct democracy in Germany.”
Wagenknecht is promoting a pension system similar to that in Austria, into which a larger proportion of the population also pays. The contribution rates there, at 22.8 percent, are significantly higher than the 18.6 percent in Germany. With similarly high rates, double-digit billions of additional amounts would flow into pension contributions every year.
