Gerhard Pfister gets hit on by the left and the right

The Center wants married couples to receive two full AVS pensions instead of a maximum of one and a half as today.Image: watson / dr

Gerhard Pfister is very popular. Deals are offered to him on the right and left by the president of the UDC Dettling and the trade unionist Maillard. The reason? The Center’s initiative for better couple pensions. For the first time, Pfister says what he thinks about his competitors’ ideas.

Stefan Bühler / ch media

The Center party, chaired by Gerhard Pfister, pays particular attention to married people. The former Christian Democratic Party, with its initiative “Yes to fair AVS pensions also for married couples”, wants to ensure that the latter receive two full AVS pensions instead of a maximum of one and a half as today. We are talking about a pension ceiling of 150%, which is justified by other advantages for married couples, such as survivors’ pensions. And the fact that a couple who live in a shared household have fewer daily expenses than a single person.

The Center Party argues that today, many unmarried couples live in a joint household and still receive two full pensions. This unequal treatment to the detriment of married people should be eliminated. This argument has failed to convince the Federal Council: twice already, it has recommended the rejection of the Center’s initiative without a counter-proposal. Particularly because of the costs: around 3.8 billion francs would be necessary to finance it.

But the ball is now in Parliament’s court, and things are starting to move on this issue. Friday, the president of the UDC Marcel Dettling outlined in the columns of the Blick an agreement on the AVS with which he wants to make concessions to the Center on the couple’s pension. And two days earlier, we learned that the president of the Swiss Trade Union Union, the Vaud Socialist States Councilor Pierre-Yves Maillard, was also drawing up plans to implement the demands of the Center’s initiative.

Questioned on the subject, the president of the Center Gerhard Pfister takes a position for the first time on the advances of the right and the left.

“The proposals show that both Pierre-Yves Maillard and Marcel Dettling assume that our initiative has good chances in popular vote”

The two proposals “would in fact amount to a counter-proposal to our initiative for fair pensions for married couples”.

Increase couples’ pensionsreduce those of widows

However, there is still much to discuss. Because Maillard’s ideas and Dettling’s proposal are far from being identical. Thus, the president of the UDC declared in the Blick:

“We are helping to adapt widows’ pensions if, in return, the ceiling for married couples in the AVS is raised to at least 175%.”

He was thus referring to another decision of the Federal Council which wants to eliminate lifetime survivors’ pensions for widows. Instead, widows and widowers will in future receive a pension until their youngest child turns 25. Today, widows receive a pension for life, even if they have no dependent children. Widowers, on the other hand, only receive it until their youngest child comes of age. With this proposal, the Federal Council is reacting to a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights which obliges Switzerland to put an end to this unequal treatment.

The Federal Council took advantage of the judgment of the Strasbourg court to present an economic project – the AVS could thus be reduced by 350 million by 2030. The left protests against this proposal, while the majority of bourgeois parties salute it.

But obviously, the leadership of the UDC around Marcel Dettling has come to the conclusion that a pure and simple dismantling project would have difficulty passing in a referendum. Especially since the base of the UDC still votes mainly like the left-wing parties on AVS projects. By raising the pension ceiling for married couples from 150% to 175%, Dettling could reassure his base – and at the same time pull the rug out from under Pfister’s Center initiative.

Increase couples’ pensionsjuggling salary percentages

“We have the impression that the UDC is starting to listen to its base,” comments union boss Maillard about Dettling’s proposal. And he notes:

“At least we now have the chance of finally achieving a turnaround on pensions”

On the merits, however, Maillard rejects Dettling’s proposal: “For obvious reasons, the increase in the couple’s pension cannot be compensation for the widows affected by the reduction in their pension.” He wants to link the financing of the extension of couple’s pensions to the future financing of the AVS, including the 13^e AVS pension decided by the people.

In total, it should be more than eight billion francs per year. And the left does not want to finance this sum only by additional percentages of VAT, but also by percentages on salaries. Maillard has salary deductions for unemployment insurance (AC) in his crosshairs. Indeed, its coffers are full – so full that employee contributions could or “should” probably be reduced in 2028, as the unionist says:

“There is a brake on wealth for the AC, it cannot accumulate money unlimitedly.”

Employee contributions would generally remain rather stable, which is why there is “room for a good compromise”.

In other words, instead of passing on the reduction in AC contributions to workers, the AVS salary percentages would be increased. Nothing would change in the workers’ wallets, neither for good nor for bad. According to an article in the NZZMaillard already obtained, last week, from the competent committee of the Council of States, that the federal administration carries out additional clarifications on the financial situation of the AVS. Including the increase in the couple’s pension.

Pfister rests and enjoy

But which of the offers pleases Gerhard Pfister the most, that of the left or that of the right? “Both want to increase the ceiling for married couples,” notes the president of the Center. He, however, sticks to full compensation at 200% and states:

“I exclude that we withdraw the initiative. Why withdraw it if even competition grants it the capacity to gather a majority?

In two sentences, he outlines the procedure to follow: “We must certainly address the widows’ pension project during the preliminary debates in Parliament, it is a mandate from the Court of Human Rights. We must therefore act,” he said. “But then we should send it back to the Federal Council until the people have voted on our initiative.” Pfister does not give up his trump card so quickly.

Translated and adapted from German by Léa Krejci