The next key piece of the German pension reform puzzle

Research evidence excerpt

The next key piece of the German pension reform puzzle

Deutsche Bank

Research

Europe Economics Date

Germany 23 June 2026

Germany Blog

The next key piece of the German

pension reform puzzle

Marion Muehlberger

Today, the next key piece of the German pension reform puzzle has been officially

Senior Economist

revealed. The expert commission on pension reform has released its 33 proposals +49-69-910-31815

on how to reform and complement the German public statutory pension system.

Ursula Walther

Research Associate

As expected, the proposals contain many well-known measures to stabilize the

pay-as-you-go statutory pension system, like slowly and moderately increasing the

pension age (from 67 to 67.5 until 2041), limiting costly early retirement programs Jan Schildbach

and raising the number of contributors by including self-employed persons. The Senior Economist

aggregate effect of all the proposals is a stabilisation of contributions to the PAYG +49-69-910-31717

system in the medium term (compared to the status quo ante). The overall package

has been welcomed by key German business associations1 and should contribute

to lifting sentiment.

Second, we would like to highlight a more surprising and game-changing element.

This is the introduction of a mandatory funded component, with 2 pp of gross

salaries to be additionally invested in a centralized public pension fund (with some

phasing in until 2031). This will eventually add up to EUR 35 bn in additional

investments into capital markets with no pre-defined asset allocation or country

split. Sweden’s “premium pension” serves as a model here. Thus, next to making

Germany's public pension system more sustainable given the ageing society, an

additional boost to German/European capital markets can potentially be expected.