Berlin  - In one of its final acts, Germany's outgoing parliament rushed through legislation guaranteeing that pensions will not be cut even if wage levels go down.

The move, which came less than three months before a general election, was seen by many as an attempt to woo senior citizens in a rapidly greying society like Germany's.

When the country goes to the polls on September 27, nearly one- third of the 62-million electorate will be aged 60 or over - a fact not lost on strategists in Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition of conservatives and centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).

"A party simply cannot afford to conduct a campaign that fails to take into account the growing importance of the pensioners," said Hans Rattinger, a political scientist at the University of Mannheim.

This became clear even before the pensions guarantee, when the government handed retirees the biggest boost in their pensions in more than a decade - 2.4 per cent for those in the West and 3.6 per cent in the states of former East Germany.

Critics claim that such overtures are inappropriate at a time of growing unemployment and a falling birth rate that experts predict will see 58 people over the age of 65 for every 100 working by 2040.

Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, whose SPD sees itself as Germany's party of social justice, said pensioners were better off than ever and expressed doubts whether the pensions law would send the right signal to the next generation.

"Those who will feel the pinch most are the 25-to-35-year olds who want to start families. We need to take more care of this generation," said the minister, who later denied he was distancing himself from the pensions promise.

Dieter Hundt, president of the German Employers Association, called it "wrong to allow pensions to remain stable at a time when wages are declining."

To ensure that young people do not have to shoulder too great a burden, the government introduced a phased increase in the retirement age which will see Germans having to work until they are 67 from 2029. The current retirement age is 65, but people can take a reduced pension at 63 provided they have worked a minimum of 35 years.

Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, recently suggested the retirement age should be extended another two years to 69, but this idea was quickly shot down by trade unions and the major political parties.

"It's the most ridiculous suggestion I've heard in a long time," said Elke Hannack, a member of the national executive of the services union Verdi. If put into practice, "it would be social exploitation of our society," she said.

Older people make up almost half the membership of Germany's two biggest political parties, the SPD and Merkel's centre-left Christian Democrats (CDU) and its Bavarian sister, the Christian Social Union.

Of the three other parties in parliament, the Greens have a 12 per cent membership over 60 and the business-oriented Free Democrats 33 per cent. The radical Left party, an alliance of former East German communists and disaffected Social Democrats and union activists from the West, has an average age of 60.

Meanwhile, three of the 27 parties fielding candidates in the general election explicitly exist to lobby for senior citizens.

The Grey Generation Party, the Pensioners Party and the Pensioners Party of Germany also contested the June 7 elections to the European Parliament, but between them managed to poll only 1.4 per cent of the vote.

"Parties that deal exclusively with the older generation and concentrate on issues such as healthcare and social policies have little chance of being elected to the Bundestag" (lower house of parliament, according to a recent study.

This is good news for the established parties, who have also promised a mix of tax cuts and job creation schemes in a bid to attract voters who have not yet reached retirement age.

For those in the twilight of their lives, voting is considered almost a sacred duty. In the last election in 2005 the turnout of voters in the 60-70 age group was 85 per cent - well above the national average of 78 per cent. (dpa)