Transforming Social Security in Agriculture in Transition Countries: The Case of East Germany)

摘要

In this paper practical and political problems concerning the transformation of the social security system in agriculture of the 'old' Federal Republic of Germany to the New Federal States are discussed. The intention is to analyse the impacts of transferring this system to East Germany, especially concerning social security matters and their financial and distributive effects. Furthermore some conclusions from the East German experiences for the trans-formation of the social policy systems for the agricultural sectors in Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) are drawn. Since insight into the interdependencies of polity, politics and policies are important for a successful guidance the political determinants of policy-making in this sectorin unified Germany are examined too. In comparison with the CEECs the transformation process in East Germany has to be dealt with as a special case. The very rapid transition from a planned economy to a market economy lead to a drastic reduction of jobsparticularly in the agricultural sector of East Germany. But unlike other CEECs in transition, a whole string of government programmes has been adopted and contributed a lot to make this process socially acceptable. The transfers from the federal budgetto the New Lander amounted to 615 billion DM from 1991 to 1995; approximately 40 per cent (215 billion DM) has been spent on social policy measures, mainly for the labour market policy measures. In this respect, the New Federal States found themselves ina unique situation which gave them a rather privileged position, facilitating and mitigating the required changes. A further consequence of this general framework of transition was that the transformation in the New Federal States meant in almost everyeconomic sector the transfer of the West German institutions. The structure of agricultural enterprises in East Germany differed, however, considerably from the West German family farms. Therefore, a sole adoption of West German institutions of social security policy for the agricultural sector in the New Federal States was problematic: On the one hand it seemed questionable whether this scheme was applicable to the special situation and particular social security demands of the farm population in the New Federal States. On the other hand the agricultural social security system in the Federal Republic of Germany had become an important instrument of agricultural income policy at the national level. Since it is highly subsidised the question arised howthis would influence the competitiveness between different legal forms of farm enterprises. Hence political decision makers were in a dilemma: introducing the special agricultural insurance system without any significant changes in the financing system would exclude many registered cooperatives from subsidies of considerable amount. So an alternative policy-option was to reform the system by decoupling the social security policy for agriculture from income policy objectives and reforming it using the social insurance systems for employees as a point of reference. Politicians have chosen different options in transferring the social security system in agriculture of the Old Federal States to the New Federal States. In health and accident insurance the policy-option of an unchanged transfer of the West German institutions was preferred. In the old age pension scheme the policy-option of a transfer was linked with a partial reform of the system, reducing the distributive advantages of the sectoral system.With the exception of the agricultural accident insurance covering all types of farm enterprises the working population in agriculture is treated in accordance to their status as self employed or employees. Whereas agricultural entrepreneurs are included into the sectoral systems, agricultural employees remain in the general statutory systems. This was a reasonable solution in terms of the different social needs of both groups. Comparing the distrib