10/06/2025October 6, 2025
Merz voices doubts over voluntary army recruitment plans
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has expressed skepticism about , or , through voluntary service.
“I suspect that it won’t stick at volunteering alone,” Merz said on public ARD television on Sunday evening.
However, he said that he supported the model proposed by in principle. Pistorius is a member of the , the junior partner in the coalition government.
“For now, we want to try to manage that voluntarily with the SPD,” he said, however adding: “I am skeptical. If we succeed, all the better.”
He said he supported his ‘s (CDU) call for a mandatory year of service for men and women in Germany, but he conceded that a constitutional change would be necessary for that to happen.
Ahead of the February elections, the CDU called for the establishment of a service year that could be completed either in the Bundeswehr or in civil society organizations.
Pistorius has defended his model himself, saying in the Monday episode of the “Table.Today” podcast that young recruits were already coming.
“We have the numbers on growth,” he said. “In this year alone, we will employ 30% more military personnel than last year,” he said.
“We are building up accommodation and training capacities so that by the year 2029, 2030 — and that is exactly the time frame we are talking about — we will have trained 100,000 additional reservists.”
“The direction is right,” Pistorius added. “There is no reason to believe it won’t work.”
A bill with the voluntary military service model was to have receive a first reading in the lower house of parliament, , on Thursday. But the debate on the bill has now been postponed to late October amid conservative calls to make military service compulsory.
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