armed forces
Pistorius for Swedish conscription model: Can the Defense Minister inspect our children?
Thinks about compulsory military service: Boris Pistorius (SPD), Federal Minister of Defense, visiting the troops.
© Daniel Löb / DPA / Picture Alliance
Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has been campaigning for months to reintroduce compulsory military service. An idea to solve the Bundeswehr’s personnel problem: mustering students.
Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) traveled to Scandinavia on Tuesday morning. He has questions for his Swedish counterpart in his luggage. He wants to know how Conscription works in the country. By April 1st, his ministry must “present options for a German military service model that makes a scalable, threat-adapted contribution to national resilience,” as “Spiegel” quotes from an internal paper.
Pistorius wants to present his own proposal for a conscription model before the next federal election, which is expected to take place in September 2025. According to “Spiegel”, the introduction to the internal document states: “The Federal Minister intends to make a decision on compulsory military service during this legislative period.”
Conscription: The personnel problem of the Bundeswehr
There are currently 181,596 soldiers serving in the armed forces. Of these, 56,706 are professional soldiers, 115,221 are contract soldiers and 9,669 are voluntary military service members. At the end of 2022, over 18,000 non-commissioned officer and officer positions in the Bundeswehr were unfilled.
The Bundeswehr’s personnel problem has existed for years. Since compulsory military service was suspended in 2011, the Ministry of Defense has been trying to find new personnel through career centers, campaigns and “Bundeswehr Day”.
As early as 2016, the then Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) announced the “turnaround in personnel”. The goal announced by 2031: an army with 203,000 employees. But it would take 20,000 new hires every year just to compensate for the number of departures. In 2022 there were just 18,775 new soldiers.
Conscription: The Swedish model as a solution
On his trip to Sweden, Pistorius wants to find out about the conscription model there – a concept that is likely to cause a stir in Germany, which is now defiant of the government: In Sweden, all (some of them young) school leavers are mustered every year. The difference to the old German compulsory military service: Only contact with the army is mandatory; in the end, the young person can decide for themselves. The Scandinavian country was recently able to recruit enough volunteers for the army in this way.
According to “Spiegel”, simply adopting this model is hardly possible in this country. In Sweden, a tenth of the students addressed choose a military career. In Germany this proportion would be 40,000 people. The capacity in this country is 3,000 or 4,000 conscripts, said Pistorius at an event on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. Pistorius has now also commented on the information from “Spiegel”: The medium is better informed than he himself. There is no time limit for the reform.
The problem of military justice
But Pistorius would have a problem with adopting the Swedish model anyway: In Germany there is constitutional justice for military service – which means that the burden of national and alliance defense should be placed on all male citizens as evenly as possible. This would not be the case with “voluntary military service” – and a lengthy change to this requirement would be necessary.
But even if the return to compulsory military service will be difficult to implement: In addition to the Bundeswehr’s growing tasks, the war in Ukraine is also a circumstance that increases the pressure on the Defense Minister. The Bundeswehr is still a volunteer army. However, the end of compulsory service only applies in times of peace. In the event of tension or defense, it could be activated again – without any major hurdles.
Sources: “Mirror”, armed forces, “Daily News”