Hamburg Green Leaders Privately Settle €130,000 Social Security Bill After Party Uprising
16.06.2026 - 02:56:08 | boerse-global.de
Under pressure from an angry grassroots, current and former board members of Hamburg's Green party have agreed to personally cover the employee portion of a €130,000 back-payment demand from Germany's pension authority. The decision ends months of internal turmoil over unpaid social security contributions that stemmed from a change in case law.
The dispute centred on monthly allowances of roughly €4,000 that the party had paid its executive board members as tax- and social-security-free expense allowances. The Bundessozialgericht, however, later ruled that such payments for the years 2020 to 2023 constituted regular, social-insurance-liable wages. A routine audit by the pension authority in 2025 brought the shortfall to light.
Rather than only repaying the statutory minimum of three months, the individuals involved are voluntarily settling the entire five-year-plus debt. The affected group includes current party chair Leon Alam, his predecessors Anna Gallina and Maryam Blumenthal, former vice-chair Martin Bill, ex-treasurer Lisa Kern, and Selina Storm. Their combined employee contributions range between €50,000 and €65,000.
Decision forced by party base
The voluntary payment was not a spontaneous gesture. In April, the party's state members' assembly had voted to cover the full €130,000 through a supplementary budget — a move that sparked furious criticism from ordinary members. Landesschatzmeisterin Tonja Körner-Uhlmann confirmed the new arrangement: the politicians are now shouldering the cost themselves to dispel any impression of having received an unfair advantage. They stressed that they wanted to ensure no financial benefit had accrued from the previous handling.
State-level salaries buck federal trend
While the Hamburg affair was being settled, a parallel story was unfolding in Germany's state parliaments. At the federal level, the Bundestag has put on hold a planned €497 increase that would have lifted members' pay to €12,330 a month. Several Länder are moving in the opposite direction.
From 1 July, Hesse's Landtag members will see their salaries rise by 4.3 percent to €10,362 a month; the cost-of-living allowance climbs 2.4 percent to €1,544. North Rhine-Westphalia pays €11,463.66, Bavaria €10,595.07. Social Democrat MP Johannes Fechner warned of a loss of political grounding and argued for a federal pay freeze — a call backed by several party groups.
New civil-service health-insurance option
Separately, Saxony-Anhalt is overhauling its civil service benefits. Starting 1 January 2026, it will introduce the so-called Hamburg model of flat-rate state health subsidies. Officials can then sign up for statutory health insurance without a financial penalty; the employer covers 50 percent of the contribution as a tax-free allowance. Hamburg first adopted this approach back in 2018, making it the first German state to do so.
