Germany, will compulsory military service be introduced?

2025-08-18 08:16:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

In the first 100 days of the Merz government, differences between the coalition partners have also emerged. There is still no full agreement on military service.

The Bundeswehr urgently needs more people - the coalition partners, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, agree on this. Chancellor Friedrich Merz wants to make the Bundeswehr the strongest conventional army in Europe, which requires better equipment and significantly more than the current 183,000 members. Based on the population, but also according to NATO guidelines, the Bundeswehr should be increased by 60,000 soldiers.

So the Bundeswehr needs to be expanded - but how? Opinions differ on this. For the SPD, the solution lies in reforming voluntary military service. However, not everyone is happy with the draft law from the Ministry of Defense. The disagreement in the coalition reigns over one of the most important issues of security policy: Germany's defense capability.

Military service

According to the draft law, military service should be made more attractive from 2026, but it remains up to young people to choose. There is no provision for compulsory military service as existed in Germany until 2011. This was also agreed in the coalition agreement: "We are creating a new, attractive military service, which is initially based on volunteerism." Volunteerism is extremely important to the Social Democrats: they consider military service to be too big an intrusion into the lives of young people.

SPD Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is convinced that this could be enough: a voluntary military service that is more interesting and better paid than the current one would attract enough young people. And that "without much effort, an average of 25,000 to 30,000 new soldiers could come in every year," he recently predicted.

The soldiers' salaries should be significantly increased, training should be modernized and expanded, for example in the use of drones. The offer also includes language courses and other opportunities. The service should last at least six months.

Crowds in front of recruitment offices?

The Defense Minister's optimism is not shared by everyone in the CDU and CSU. In the current situation, it is not enough to rely solely on the fact that there will be enough volunteers. According to the deputy chairman of the CDU parliamentary group, Norbert Röttgen, a serious flaw in the draft law on military service is "that it does not contain the goals of NATO at all, the goals to which we are committed," he told the daily Die Welt.

Although military service remains voluntary, the law also provides for mandatory measures. So, starting next year, all 18-year-old men and women will receive a conscription into the Bundeswehr.

The letter has a questionnaire where they must answer about military service and their attitudes. The purpose of the questionnaire is to encourage young people to at least consider serving in the armed forces.

The Defense Minister hopes that this will increase the number of applications. But even before these questionnaires, there are currently more volunteers in the Bundeswehr than before. At the end of July, there were just over 11,000 recruits, which is an increase of around 15 percent compared to last year. From 2027 recruitment for all young men

The new law provides for another obligation: in the future, all young men will be conscripted, that is, they will be called for a medical examination, even if they have not expressed interest in military service. According to the initial plans of the Minister of Defense, conscription would be mandatory for all 18-year-olds from the beginning of 2028.

But there are also politicians who think this should happen even sooner.

The Swedish model

Germany is following the Swedish example - but only partially. In Sweden, young people are forced to serve in the army if the need is greater than the number of voluntary registrations. In Germany, such a mechanism is not provided for.

What if the new voluntary military service does not meet the expectations of the Minister of Defense? Or if the security situation deteriorates dramatically? In that case, the government could decide to reinstate compulsory military service, with the approval of the Bundestag. This is what the new law provides for, but it does not include an automatic mechanism that would require the reinstatement of military service in certain cases.

The chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, Matthias Miersch, is convinced that there will be no negotiations on the return of military service in this term, that is, until 2029.

In contrast, many in the CDU and CSU would prefer to immediately include the restoration of military service in this law. They doubt the success of the new voluntary military service and warn of the growing threat from Russia.

Military service was abolished in 2011, not by the Social Democratic government, but by a CSU politician. At the time, the Minister of Defense was Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. Current Chancellor Friedrich Merz considers this a mistake, but there is still no concrete solution./ DW