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With three months left to run before general elections on September 22, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian-Democratic Union (CDU) has announced a programme to upgrade a wide range of welfare benefits.
The planned measures, which, according to business daily Handelsblatt, will cost the German exchequer €28.5bn, include: increased family allowances, supplementary pensions for housewives, the introduction of a minimum wage for certain sectors, and further rent-capping measures.
In France Les Echos notes that the benefits overhaul will be “enthusiastically welcomed by voters but contribute to Germany’s deficit.” The Parisian newspaper adds that the plan is in “stark contrast to the bitter potion that Angela Merkel has proposed to her crisis-stricken neighbours.”
