BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany’s coalition partners announced a compromise on Thursday over new rules on military service, a key element in a wider drive to rebuild the country’\u200bs shrunken armed forces.<\/p>\n
The model agreed by Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats \u200cwould see a hybrid system built around voluntary service with the option of a mandatory call-up if needed.<\/p>\n
Like other European countries, Germany,\u200c which had an army of almost half a million during the Cold War, ran down its armed forces during the peacetime years of the 1990s.<\/p>\n
“We will make voluntary service more attractive, we want to get as many young people excited about service for their country,” Jens Spahn, the parliamentary leader of Merz’s Christian Democratic Union \u2060party told reporters.<\/p>\n
“If in the \u200cend, voluntary service isn’t enough, there will have to be a mandatory element.”<\/p>\n
The agreement came after weeks of wrangling over what form of military service would be \u200dbest suited to building up troop numbers while maintaining broad popular support.<\/p>\n
MERZ PLEDGE TO BUILD EUROPE’S STRONGEST ARMY<\/p>\n
In the face of perceived threats from Russia and heavy pressure from Germany’s traditional ally, the U.S., Merz has pledged to rebuild \u200bthe Bundeswehr into Europe’s strongest conventional army.<\/p>\n
It currently has around 182,000 uniformed troops and has set \u200ca goal of increasing the size of the force to 255,000-270,000 with another 200,000 reservists.<\/p>\n
The war in Ukraine and a stark warning from the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump that Europe must take responsibility for its own defence has set off a scramble to rebuild and re-equip armed forces after years of neglect.<\/p>\n
Defence Minister Boris Pistorius warned last year that Germany must be ready for war by 2029 and even before Merz’\u2060s government took office in May, parliament agreed an unprecedented overhaul \u200bof rules to raise billions of euros for defence spending.<\/p>\n
Under the new \u200bproposals, expected to come into law at the start of next year, a system of mandatory registration and medical screening will be introduced, while any compulsory call-up would \u200dbe subject to a separate \u2060vote in Parliament.<\/p>\n
All 18-year-olds will receive a questionnaire about their interest in serving. For men, answering the questionnaire will be mandatory. Recruits would receive monthly pay of 2,600 euros.<\/p>\n
Medical examinations will \u2060begin with those born in 2008 and expand gradually.<\/p>\n
If the numbers volunteering for service are insufficient, parliament can vote for needs-based \u200cconscription, although the details of how this would function have not been agreed.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200cMarkus Wackert and James Mackenzie, editing by Ed Osmond)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany’s coalition partners announced a compromise on Thursday over new rules on military service, a key…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[17542,29134,2000,299,1945,1824,180342,334,14835,62196],"class_list":{"0":"post-567522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-armed-forces","9":"tag-christian-democratic-union","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-friedrich-merz","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-mandatory-element","15":"tag-military-service","16":"tag-service","17":"tag-voluntary-service"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}