Pre-school Berliners are to be given free childcare in a move expected to make the German capital even more attractive to young families.
The city is the first of Germany’s 16 states to abolish fees, in a country where the cost of sending children to kindergarten differs vastly depending on where you live.
“Berlin has kept its promise and has resumed its policy to be family-friendly,” said Sandra Scheeres, the Berlin senator for youth and a member of the Social Democrats.
But even as many parents were celebrating the move, which will save them hundreds of euros a month, critics were warning that the apparently generous gesture threatened to sink the city’s creaking childcare infrastructure.
Problems such as underinvestment, underpaid carers and a lack of kindergarten places are likely to worsen as millions of euros are diverted to pay for the scheme, according to the Greens, who are among its main critics.
The abolition of fees in Berlin, where under means-testing parents had been paying on average less than 2% of their net income for a kindergarten place, according to a recent study by the Bertelsmann Foundation, has triggered a national debate about discrepancies between states.
Parents in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein pay just under 10% of their net income on kindergarten fees.
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