German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has submitted his bill to parliament for a new organization of military service, DPA reported, quoted by BTA.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz's government intends to bring back conscription, which was abolished in 2011, in some form to respond to the growing Russian threat and strengthen the German armed forces in line with NATO's new defense goals.
However, the ruling coalition is divided on the issue, DPA reports. The German Social Democratic Party, of which Pistorius is a member, insists that the new military service should be voluntary, while Merz's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the CDU's sister party, the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), support the introduction of a mandatory element.
Because of this division, the first reading of the bill in the lower house of the German parliament (Bundestag) was postponed last week, and on Tuesday a press conference at which a deal between the coalition partners was expected to be announced was canceled at the last minute.
The dispute concerns a proposal to resort to a lottery principle to call up new recruits for compulsory service if not enough volunteers are gathered, DPA reports. Pistorius has publicly opposed the idea.
The defense minister stressed today that there would be no coercive measures, even if it turned out that there were not enough volunteers. But he insisted that the matter should be settled "by a decision of the Bundestag."
Regarding the dispute, Pistorius said that anything other than "passionate, frank, even heated debate" would be disappointing. "This topic deserves honest and open debate because it affects the lives of many, many people," he said.