Bärbel BAS: Fighting social fraud consistently - new regulations in view!

Bärbel BAS: Fighting social fraud consistently - new regulations in view!

On May 10, 2025, the new Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Bärbel Bas announced a determined course against the abuse of social benefits. With considerable emphasis, she demands that the fight against social service fraud, in particular the undeclared work when maintaining basic security, will be reinforced. Your goal is to take measures that not only affect the misconduct of individual beneficiaries, but also take companies responsibility that allow such fraud. "Companies that enable social service fraud should be punished harder," said BAS, announcing that it was checking the existing sanctions for their effectiveness and, if necessary, tightening.

Bärbel BAS also emphasizes that the beneficiaries are obliged to participate in the integration into the labor market. This could mean that sanctions will be imposed faster and more clearly in the future. She rejects a complete deletion of social benefits, but considers more extreme cases possible. Ensuring the subsistence level remains a central concern of your policy. In the coalition agreement of the Union and the SPD, the redesign of the citizens' benefit to a new basic security for those seeking employees is anchored.

New citizenship and control rates

The basic security for job seekers, who was previously known as "Hartz IV", is now referred to as "citizen benefit". This system supports households that cannot make a living independently through financial, advisory and integrating services. According to the current provisions, the beneficiaries have to exhaust all options in order to end their dependence on social benefits. In this context, sanctions can result in sanctions that result in a reduction in performance or deletion for a specified period. Ensuring a decent life and enforcing obligations. The discussion about sanctions received new buoyancy through a judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court in November 2019, which questioned the appropriateness of the rules.

A reform of the citizens' allowance in 2023 already led to a defusing of the sanction regulations. While under "Hartz IV", for example, a reduction of 10 % and, in the event of serious breaches of duty of up to 100 % of the services, the average affected service group was only reduced to around 3 % per month under the new system. This shows that the course of the sanction was 2.6 % in 2023 and even fell to 0.7 % in June 2024. In view of the economic situation, however, a discussion of the regulations is again discussed in order to create incentives to start work.

The challenge of the sanctions

Research has shown that sanctions can help promote employment, but can also have significant negative effects on the quality of employment and the quality of life of the beneficiaries. There are signs that high sanctions can lead to a withdrawal from the labor market or to debt problems. Psychological stress is also a common result. The studies therefore recommend a balanced design of the sanction regulations to create incentives to work without disproportionately affecting the living conditions of the needy. Sanction regulations in basic security are also repeatedly put to the test.