“People who can work and receive a job offer but do not accept it should in principle no longer receive citizen benefits,” Spahn told the newspapers of the publishing network Germany (RND). “If the jurisprudence of the Federal Constitutional Court does not contemplate a general suppression, we should simply change the Constitution.”

Spahn: Heil's plans “are far from sufficient”

“Anyone who is made an offer or supported has a duty to take advantage of it,” continued the member of the CDU executive committee. “Whoever still refuses to do so cannot depend on the financing of others. This can also be included in the Constitution.” The toughening of sanctions on citizens' money, recently planned by the Federal Minister of Labor, Hubertus Heil (SPD), is a first step in the right direction, “but they are far from being enough,” Spahn said.

Heil had announced that he wanted to toughen “sanction options against total objectors.” Then the State should only cover housing costs so that those affected do not become homeless. Cancellation of citizen benefit payments should be limited to two months.

However, the Greens consider the planned deletion unconstitutional. “The Federal Constitutional Court ruled in 2019 that, in general, sanctions can only be justified up to a level of 30 percent,” Green Party MP Andreas Audretsch recently told Düsseldorf's “Rheinische Post.”

IG Metall describes the Heil Plan as “pure symbolic politics”

Unions also criticize Heil's plans. According to a report on Sunday, IG Metall boss Christiane Benner told the newspapers of the Funke media group that the planned tightening of sanctions on citizens' money was “purely symbolic politics”: “We have an extremely small number of people radicals who refuse to work.

Benner attacked the Union, which had pursued an unpleasant polarization. “Mr Merz and Mr Söder are pitting minimum wage recipients against citizen benefit recipients. “This is irresponsible,” he stated. “Leave the church in town. “These are people who are doing shit economically.”

The head of IG Metall stated that here “people are being thrown into the deep end, although there are often black sheep on the side of capital: tax evasion, fraud, deception. And they cause greater damage, also social, than the few beneficiaries of citizen benefits that are currently being talked about.”