Approval of the Federal Council for the "2024 Ordinance on the Update of Standard Requirements Levels"

The regulation, which will come into force on 1 January 2024, provides for an adjustment to the standard requirements for social assistance, including an increase in the citizen's allowance by an average of 12 percent for more than five million recipients.

One major innovation is the introduction of a new calculation method for the Citizen's Income, which now takes current inflation into account in addition to prices and wages in order to make the benefits more inflation- and crisis-proof. The standard needs are adjusted in two stages: Firstly, there is a basic update with a mixed index, 70 per cent of which takes into account the development of prices relevant to standard needs and 30 per cent the development of net wages and salaries. This is followed by a supplementary update that takes current price trends into account.

The calculations are based on a fixed legal framework that leaves no room for deviations. The significant increase in standard requirements is primarily due to the high rates of price increases for food, which have a greater impact on the calculation of price trends relevant to standard requirements than the general consumer price index.