Brussels – Germany forges ahead with remilitarization. Chancellor Friedrich Merz wants to expand the size of the Bundeswehr, Berlin’s army, as soon as possible, after it has suffered from decades of underinvestment, and is pressing his cabinet to approve the reform of the armed forces. The most sensitive issue remains mass conscription, on which there are still significant distances between conservatives and socialists.
In three and a half months at the helm of the executive, Friedrich Merz has not stopped pushing to realize one of his main political goals: the rearming of Germany. Elected federal chancellor in May, the CDU leader has rapidly advanced the country in translating the Zeitenwende (“historic turning point”) in defense into concrete terms, first by abandoning the debt brake to unlock hundreds of billions of euros in investments, then by activating the safeguard clause of the European Stability Pact.
Today (27 August), his cabinet approved the new course of the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces that the Bundeskanzler wants to transform into the “strongest conventional army in NATO on the European side,” as he said at a press conference after the meeting, “because of the size and economic strength” of the central European country.
We want to strengthen the Bundeswehr in terms of personnel and make it more attractive to young people. This is now happening with the Act on the Modernisation of Military Service. We are thus implementing a central project of the coalition agreement. pic.twitter.com/fByVxAuda0
– Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz (@bundeskanzler) August 27, 2025
Alongside him, the Defense Minister, the Social Democrat Boris Pistorius, agreed that Berlin’s army “needs to grow: We not only need a well-equipped force,” he explained, but also a “strong army in terms of manpower.” Indeed, Merz acknowledged, “there is a lack of barracks and instructors, which means that everything has to grow again from the bottom up, and now this growth is being accelerated.”
It took many weeks of intensive negotiations between the government’s allies, the Christian Democrats of the Union (CDU-CSU) and the Social Democrats of the SPD, to reach this agreement. The common goal is to raise the Berlin armed forces from the current 182,000 troops to 260,000 (plus 200,000 reservists) by the end of the decade, also to meet the newly set capacity targets.
The most significant bone of contention within the German coalition is mass conscription. Pistorius’ SPD prefers a volunteer-based approach, aiming to make military service “attractive” among young Germans. On the other hand, the head of the Diplomacy Johann Wadephul (CDU) pushes for compulsory conscription, described by the Bavarian premier Markus Söder (CSU) as “inevitable.”
Ultimately, today’s compromise accommodates both positions. In the first phase, recruitment will be voluntary. It will become mandatory (suspended in 2011 by Angela Merkel) only in exceptional cases and subject to authorization by the federal parliament. The recruitment targets will increase year by year, from the 20,000 targeted in 2026 to the 38,000 planned for 2030.
From next year, therefore, all male citizens born from 2008 onwards will be required to undergo a mandatory fitness check to be entered, in the event of a positive outcome, into a national military register. Female recruitment should remain voluntary even in emergencies. According to data provided by the Ministry of Defense, the German armed forces recorded a 28 percent year-on-year increase in recruits between January and July.
According to media reports, however, the agreement reportedly did not satisfy the conservative ‘hawks.‘ Several dissenters wanted to see an automatic mechanism in place to switch to compulsory enlistment if the minimum troop threshold is not met. Still, the compromise reached so far seems acceptable to the Chancellor.
The Bundestag will have to approve the proposal, and this cannot be taken for granted. Having received the green light from the House, the executive will have to come to terms with the chronic underinvestment in its armed forces as a natural consequence of the “constitutional pacifism” imposed on Germany by the Allies after World War II, in view of the country’s warlike past.
The national debate on the Bundeswehr reform has been ongoing since the large-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022. Merz’s predecessor, the Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, had already announced his own Zeitenwende, dropping the historical taboo of German rearmament and introducing a special 100 billion fund.
Moscow remains the number one strategic threat to Berlin. The Federation “is and will remain in the long run the greatest threat to freedom, peace, and stability in Europe,” Merz said. The CDU-SPD legislative proposal states that Russia would be “militarily creating the conditions” to be able, in the not too distant future, “to attack NATO territories.” The intelligence of several European countries, including Germany, has long suggested that the Kremlin could target the Alliance’s eastern flank by 2035.
Precisely in response to Russian aggression, in May, Germany officially inaugurated the first deployment of troops abroad since 1945 by stationing an armored brigade in Lithuania. However, the question of a potential deployment of the Bundeswehr in Ukraine, to monitor a possible ceasefire in the context of the security guarantees promised to Kyiv from the coalition of the willing, is fueling yet another heated political debate between the majority partners.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
