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  3. As the country with the European Union’s fastest ageing population, Germany has repeatedly adjusted its pension system to avert

As the country with the European Union’s fastest ageing population, Germany has repeatedly adjusted its pension system to avert

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问题    As the country with the European Union’s fastest ageing population, Germany has repeatedly adjusted its pension system to avert a slow-motion demographic disaster. The biggest reform came during Angela Merkel’s first term as chancellor. Then, as now, Christian Democrats were yoked with Social Democrats in a "grand coalition". In 2007 the coalition decided that the normal retirement age should gradually rise from 65 to 67.
   Mrs Merkel has since preached similar demographic and economic wisdom to most of her EU partners, criticizing France in particular for straying off the right path. So it comes as something of a shock that Mrs Merkel, now in her third term and running another grand coalition, is reversing course. On the campaign trail for last September’s election, she promised to raise pensions for older mothers. The Social Democrats countered with promises to let certain workers retire at 63 instead of 65. As coalition partners, they will do both at once.
   It falls to Andrea Nahles, the labour minister and a Social Democrat who likes to wave the banner of "social justice" , to push the pension package through parliament by the summer so that it can take effect on July 1st. A previous reform let women with children born after 1992 treat three of their stay-at-home maternity years if they had worked and paid full pension contributions. The new "mother pension" will be for the 8m-9m women who took time off for children before 1992. They will be allowed to count two of those years, instead of just one, as working years for pension purposes.
   The second part of Mrs Nahles’s reforms, retirement at 63, is aimed at people who have contributed to the pension system for at least 45 years. But Mrs Nahles wants to count not only years spent working or caring for children or other family members but also periods of short-term unemployment. Separately, she will also boost the pensions of people who cannot work due to disability, and spend more money to help them to recover.
   Individually, these proposals may seem noble-minded. But as a package, the plan is "shortsighted and one-sided," thinks Axel Bersch-Supan, a pension adviser at the Munich Centre for the Economics of Ageing. It benefits the older generation, which is already well looked after, at the expense of younger people who will have to pay higher contributions or taxes. "The financial and psychological costs of the pension at 63 are disastrous," Mr Bersch-Supan says. There will no longer be any incentive to keep working longer. In some cases, people may, in effect, retire at 61, register as unemployed for two years, and then draw their full pensions.
Merkel has astonished the public because she______.
选项 A、changed her curriculum
B、made a unrealistic promise
C、overturned her old decision
D、criticized her coalition partner
答案C
解析 细节题。根据Merkel、astonished等关键词定位到第二段第二句：So it comes as something of a shock that Mrs Merkel…is reversing course．其中astonished“惊讶”=shock“震惊”。答案句为：Mrs Merkel is reversing course．“默克尔颠覆了之前的路线。”选项[A]changed her curriculum“更改她的课程”；该项把原文course误解为“课程”，是明显的错误选项。[B]made a unrealistic promise“作出不切实际的承诺”；下文提到她的承诺，但是与答案句无关，故该项可以排除。[C]overturned her old decision“推翻她之前的决定”；该项与答案句reversing course是替换关系，其中overturned=reversing；old decision=course：故该项正确。[D]criticized her coalition partners“指责她的联盟伙伴”；该项与答案句无关，可以排除。综上[C]为正确答案。
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