Why foreign freelance language teachers are fleeing Germany
Since 1999, a black cloud has been hanging over Germany’s freelance language teachers. A law dating back to 1913, revised in 1922 and virtually forgotten since then has been resurrected by the German Social Security Administration (Bundesversicherungsanstalt für Angestellte, BfA), which requires freelance teachers to pay nearly 20% of their income into the state social security system.
This may not sound terribly dramatic: after all, plenty of people working in Germany have to pay into the state system. However, freelance teachers are normally exempt from mandatory payments. The vast majority of people who are required to pay have salaried jobs and half their contributions are made by their employer. Self-employed teachers, however, fall into a small and quite arbitrary group of freelancers who are required to pay and who are also obliged to fork out the full 19.3% themselves. It is necessary to make social security contributions for five years in order to receive a pension at all, and if a freelance teacher leaves the country before five years have elapsed, he or she will be reimbursed only half the amount paid.
This system is draconian indeed. But this is not the worst of it: despite the fact that virtually no one (and this includes tax advisors, lawyers and even civil servants working at the BfA) was aware of the existence of the law, those teachers now being caught by the BfA are required to pay up to four years in back payments. Bills for over DM 30,000 are not unusual. The unfairness of the situation is compounded by the fact that the BfA and other official bodies, such as the Kreisverwaltungsreferat and embassies, have hitherto consistently misinformed teachers inquiring about their obligation to pay.
The current social security system in Germany is in a very poor state. Money paid into it is unlikely to protect freelance teachers from an impecunious old age: assuming payments have been made for five years, a pension of roughly DM 40 per month can be expected.
Many freelance language teachers who work in Germany have made private pension provisions or pay into the state schemes in their respective home countries. Having a private insurance scheme ameliorates the BfA situation somewhat: freelance teachers who took out a private pension scheme are exempt from back payments for 1996, 1997 and 1998. This is, however, a concession that the BfA has only declared itself willing to make, and is not yet law. Having a state pension in another country makes no difference as far as the BfA is concerned. Full payment still has to be made into the German system.
Faced with such demands, freelance teachers who are not German nationals are seriously considering whether it is worth staying in Germany or indeed staying in the teaching profession. Some have already left the country and others are drastically reducing the number of hours they work as teachers. The number of new teachers coming to Germany is also falling. Difficulties have already arisen at language schools and in-company training classes — it is becoming increasingly hard-pressed to find and keep teachers.
The BfA issue has led to an outcry among Germany’s freelance teachers. The problem has received quite a lot of national and international media attention, and has attracted the interest of a number of German and European MEPs. As the law discriminates against freelance teachers and is possibly inconsistent with European law, the case could well be put before the German constitutional court or indeed taken to Brussels.
A petition calling for the abolition of this law is circulating in Munich. Please sign it and encourage others to do the same. Anyone interested in participating in the discussion that has been kindled, or who would like to contact teachers affected by the law, should visit the Target English website at
