It sounds like, as best I can tell, the recipients get these funds because they have children financially depending on them. The parents work in Germany, but the kids are somewhere else.
It makes sense that someone should be helping the children, and the rationale is that since the child is best helped by the parent receiving the funds and spending them accordingly, the government the parent is working for is in the best position to disburse the payment. In practical terms, it would be more difficult for other countries to handle the payments.
The most reasonable arguments against this agree that, as an EU collective, member states have a duty to provide for children of the EU (on each state's own terms), but differ in how much should be spent helping the foreign children of these local workers.
In support of the status quo, is the idea that because the parent contributes to the German economy, the children deserve German benefits. For instance, why should one parent get less money to help their kids than another parent, despite both serving the German economy?
Against the status quo, is consideration of how much aid the children actually need. If the foreign kids need less money to meet the same living conditions than German kids would, it makes sense to disburse less money to support to foreign child. After all, why should one parent's kids be given a richer childhood just because the parent's kids reside in a poorer country? It's about exchange rates.
Unfortunately, these nuances will probably be lost in public discourse, in favor of anti-immigration rhetoric that opposes being a part of the EU at all.
If the childrens' parents are in Germany but they're not, who's taking care of them? Am I missing something
Child support paid out of the country is purely a sacrifice for the government since none of that money is going to be spent on German goods or services. Using that sacrifice to gain an advantage seems unfair to me.
Would make sense to me to balance out of country child support to the destination country's living costs, but would that apply in to more expensive countries as well?
I think the idea here is that other countries may also be paying for kids living in Germany in equivalent circumstances, as part of an EU policy thing? Conceptually the humanitarian expense of this is made up for by the benefits of being a member state.
The possibility of a poorer country having to pay extra to meet a German standard of living is a good argument for retaining the status quo, or at least not changing it to the last model I mentioned in my other post.
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