German government, opposition reach deal on benefit overhaul

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s governing parties and the main opposition bloc have reached a compromise that should allow an overhaul of the country’s unemployment benefit system — a central policy of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government — to go ahead in somewhat watered-down form. The reform will replace a system drawn up nearly two decades ago by a center-left government under then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, which tightened benefit rules for the long-term unemployed. That system was part of a package of reforms that was credited with helping make Europe’s biggest economy more robust. It has long been loathed by left-wingers and contributed to years of weakness for the center-left party of Schroeder and Scholz.