GERMANY: Military service tested
01 March 2002
Over recent years, more and more EU member states have abolished the practice of compulsory military service. Rather than representing a drive towards the demilitarisation of society however, this development has reflected the restructuring of the EU armies to deal with the new "security concerns" of the EU after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Germany, there have been longstanding demands from peace activists for the abolition of compulsory conscription, and the constitutionality of the practice was recently tested with the Federal Constitutional Court. The court ruled against the plaintiff, but only on grounds of formal mistakes on the part of the regional court which first ruled in his favour, not on grounds of a substantive examination of the claim. Contrary to the government therefore, lawyers and activists do not interpret this most recent ruling as a defeat for the campaign for the abolition of compulsory conscription, but as a move to gain more time for the government to restructure Germany's "outdated" army.
The background to the debate in Germany has to be seen in relation to EU efforts to harmonise the structure of their armed forces for future cooperation, in particular in the Rapid Reaction Force, as well as in relation to Germany's efforts to establish itself militarily on the international scene again after World War Two (see Statewatch vol 11 no 6). One important aspect of the EU's security and defence policy is the harmonisation of the structure and training of the Member States’ armies. Compulsory military service however, poses problems as to the compatibility of different military systems for EU military cooperation and warfare.
A report by the EU defence committee on the preferred movement towards a professional army system in the EU (EU Document 1669, 10.11.99) was being prepared at the same time as German defence minister Rudolf Scharping called for a planning report to assess the restructuring of Germany's armed forces, which had played more of a symbolic rather than an interventionist role until the fall of the Berlin wall. The report says that the size, structure and equipment of the Bundeswehr did not meet the army's new role. This is why the government then appointed an independent Commission on the Common Security and the Future of the Bundeswehr, to analyse and examine "the risks and interests of the Federal Republic of Germany in the field of security". The Commission report was presented on 23 May 1999.
The aim of the restructuring was to:
prepare the Bundeswehr in terms of size, structure, armament and equipment for the task it is most likely to perform within its mission: participation in crisis prevention and crisis management operations - to be able to fulfil national and Alliance defence requirements and meet international commitments
and thus to
enable the armed forces to cooperate effectively with the partners in NATO, the EU, the UN and the OSCE and to as far as possible Europeanise security, defence and arms acquisition policy. Two operational contingents with a total of 90 to 100 combat aircraft, 10 ground-based air defence squadrons, as well as aerial refuelling and airlift components
The question of the possible future form of the military service and the size of the armed forces was central to the Commission, which is why it had:
in-depth discussions on the advantages and disadvantages of armed forces based on voluntary and compulsory military service...[as] the drastic downsizing of the Bundeswehr would have made the transition to a purely voluntary system seem only natural. The commission, however, is of the opinion that the Bundeswehr of the future cannot rely solely on volunteers
Conscripts will continue to be needed - albeit in far fewer numbers than at present.
The Commission recommended that the 10 months of compulsory military service be retained, but that the conscription would be selective with a view to "downsizing". The focus should be on crisis<