New rules for Hartz IV: What is to be learned from the court ruling?

According to the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court, the standard rates for Hartz-IV recipients must be re-calculated. Wolfgang Franz, Center for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim, states that the implications of the court's ruling stand in a "reverse relationship to the attention given it in the media": the ruling means anything but a redefinition of the welfare state. The ruling also supplies no basis for a general increase in the standard rate. Richard Hauser, formerly of the University of Frankfurt, sees a great probability that the ruling will lead to a higher rate for children, and discusses the question of whether the granting of "vouchers could help defuse the publicly voiced suspicion that higher child rates would be pocketed by the parents". In the opinion of Joachim Möller, Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, the Federal Constitutional Court pronounced "a prudent, balanced and understandable ruling". It no way did it question the core of the Hartz-IV reforms. Rather, it insisted that that deficiencies in its implementation be removed. The issues that the court explicitly did not address are much more central than the ones that it declared to be unconstitutional. Also Martin Werding, University of Bochum, stresses that the court did not address any fundamental criticism towards the reform. It neither questioned the character of the benefits made on the basis of the Hartz-IV law nor the basic social protection designed to ensure a minimum survival income nor the goal of a stronger activation of recipients that are fit to work. Heinz Buschkowsky, district mayor of Berlin-Neukölln, welcomes that the court dealt intensively with the way the standard rate for children is calculated. The result - that children as independent personalities also have a right to have their specific needs taken into account - is not to be criticised. The benefits for children should not be calculated as a reduced percentage of the adult benefits. Politicians now need to return to the drawing board to come up with a solution for children.