State Parliament: Brandenburg’s state parliament partly wants to forego Diet Plus

The constituency allowance and the contribution to pension provision are unaffected. In principle, the general automatic increase in diets remains in place, for which a cap of 3.5 percent currently applies.

The entire diet should not be frozen

“The state parliament and the members of parliament are ready to make their contribution in a tense budget situation,” said the parliamentary managing director of the SPD parliamentary group, Ludwig Scheetz. That is a saving of around 700,000 euros in the state parliament budget. “In this way, we are taking the strained budget situation into account and at the same time ensuring the mandate-related ability to work, especially where specific parliamentary work on site is involved.”

The majority of the compensation – the official name of the diets – changes according to the development of income for employees, the smaller part changes according to changes in consumer prices. There is also a constituency allowance and a contribution to pension provision. This year, the first part of the compensation is 8,911.89 euros per month, the second part is 1,217.22 euros, the constituency allowance is 270 euros and the pension contribution is 10,399.11 euros.

Opposition calls for renunciation

The coalition factions’ proposal was considered a surprise. The opposition factions of the AfD and BSW initially demanded that there be no further increase next year. Just a few weeks ago, the coalition pointed out that it would only be clear in the fall how the diets would change.

The parliamentary director of the AfD parliamentary group, Dennis Hohloch, had previously warned that the diets could either increase by 580 euros for each MP per month or – with a cap of 3.5 percent – 424 euros per month. The AfD only calls for a change every two years based on income development. The coalition’s plans do not go far enough for the group. “They are just suspending the diet increase for a portion of the diets,” Hohloch said.

The BSW parliamentary group called for a zero round for both parts of the basic compensation. Falk Peschel said that politics must regain credibility.

Diets have not increased steadily in recent years. There was a zero round in 2021 and 2022 during the corona pandemic.