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SPD leader: Ask young people about their willingness to serve
“What I think is right is that every young person is confronted at some point in their life with the question of whether he or she wants to do a service for our country,” says SPD leader Lars Klingbeil. photo
© Bernd von Jutrczenka/dpa
Lars Klingbeil thinks little of reintroducing compulsory military service. The SPD leader would rather give young people the choice of whether they want to do a service for the country.
“Personally, I don’t believe in reintroducing compulsory military service because I think that compulsory service is not appropriate,” said Klingbeil to the Düsseldorf “Rheinische Post”. “What I think is right is that every young person is confronted at some point in their life with the question of whether he or she would like to do a service for our country. No matter whether in the Bundeswehr or in the social sector. For this we need the voluntary services strengthen.”
At the same time, Klingbeil welcomed “the efforts of (Defense Minister) Boris Pistorius to make the Bundeswehr more attractive as an employer and to recruit young talent.” Pistorius said before Christmas that, given the shortage of personnel in the troops, he was examining models of compulsory service, citing the Swedish model as an example.
However, there is no pure compulsory military service there, but rather a general civil or military service requirement for all young men and women. Everyone is mustered and then selected based on their suitability and motivation for military service – in 2025 around 8,000 out of 100,000 will be able to complete their duty in the troops, as the defense attaché at the embassy in Berlin, Jonas Hard af Segerstad, recently wrote in the defense blog “Augen straight ahead!” explained.