Strategic Readiness of European Defence - Conscription or Crisis: Germany's Military Crossroads

Blog post by Kerry Hoppe

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Jack Wang, Jannic Meyer & Kerry Hoppe
August 08, 2025

Kerry Hoppe on Germany’s Draft Debate

Welcome back to the Resilience Newsletter!

This week, we’re excited to share a Part 1 of a 3-Part Series by Kerry Hoppe exploring the timely debate in Germany about the push for defence readiness and the corresponding focus on the revived conscription debate, its legal and political hurdles, the Swedish-style implementation plans and timelines and the persistent staffing, infrastructure, and bureaucratic constraints that could impede execution.

Kerry Hoppe is founding member and host of the Munich Security Breakfast, a networking event within the framework of the Munich Security Conference fostering valuable connections between investors, founders and military personnel to promote innovation in defense. She is a reserve officer in the German Air Force and active within the German Liberals (FDP) furthering defense and resilience policy.

Yours,
Uwe, Jack and Jannic

Strategic Readiness of European Defense - Conscription or Crisis: Germany's Military Crossroads

Berlin’s new coalition has secured extraordinary additional budgets for the Bundeswehr. At least until 2029, money will hardly stand in the way on Germany’s path towards defence readiness. Following the first so-called “Sondervermögen” in 2022, which delivered a hundred billion euros’ worth of investments in the Bundeswehr, the new government agreed on another significant investment package to close existing armament, equipment and capability gaps. 

One key challenge will be translating this funding into timely and reliable contracting and procurement. The other challenge is equally critical: overcoming the existing and foreseeable dramatic shortage of personnel.

Following the annexation of Crimea, a force expansion from 182,000 to 203,000 troops was approved. However, recruitment efforts have proved unsuccessful and the gap to target remains significant. At the same time, a potential increase to an active strength of up to 260,000 by the early 2030s is already under discussion in order to meet NATO targets. There is a growing concern in the debate that the current concept of a volunteer army has reached a glass ceiling.

The debate on the reinstatement of compulsory military service initiated by the Minister of Defence Pistorius in the summer of 2024, has thus fallen on fertile ground and has since taken up considerable space in public discourse. This is due in no small part to the high level of emotion with which a new military service is charged across party and generational lines in German society. 

Beyond the social dimension of reinstatement, however, numerous other questions arise: Is a return to conscription not just politically and legally, but also militarily feasible? What are the respective scenarios for implementation? And how much can conscription really contribute to military readiness? 

This is my attempt at contextualisation.

Historical perspective on compulsory military service

After the Bundeswehr was founded in 1955, it became clear that reaching the 500,000 troops required by NATO would be impossible based exclusively on voluntary service. Compulsory military service was therefore necessary and was enshrined in the German constitution in 1956. As early as January 1957, the first 10,000 conscripts began their service, contributing to the rapid expansion of the Bundeswehr to just under 250,000 soldiers in 1959. This growth continued until shortly before the end of the Cold War, culminating in a maximum personnel strength of 495,000 soldiers. 

When conscription was suspended both practically and legally in 2011, the Bundeswehr had halved in size to less than 250,000 soldiers. The decision followed the findings of a Bundeswehr structural commission which, alongside financial considerations, focused on the requirements of out-of-area missions for the German Armed Forces whilst neglecting the need for territorial defence in Europe. The previous year's NATO summit in Lisbon, where alliance defence was elevated to parity with global crisis management for the first time in more than a decade, went largely unnoticed.

The scenario of a major interstate war seemed too remote, fiscal pressures and constraints too powerful, and social discontent too pressing in view of conscription justice due to declining numbers of actual draftees versus a majority of young men never seeing military service. Courts and commentators had increasingly criticised this “lottery draft” as violating the principle of equal burden-sharing (“Wehrgerechtigkeit”).  

Points of contention with regard to reintroduction

Thirteen years after the suspension, Defence Minister Pistorius, then still part of the former coalition government of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals, proposed military service based on the Swedish model: All young men and women aged 18 would be contacted in writing, a suitable portion would be screened, and those actually needed would be drafted. The minister was unable to push the proposal through cabinet. The sole remainder of the original draft proposal was the sending of a questionnaire to all 18-year-olds, which only men would be required to answer.

With the breakup of the coalition and the revival of the conservative-social democratic coalition, the possibility of a new iteration arose. The coalition agreement of April 2025 stated: 

 "We are creating a new, attractive military service that will initially be based on voluntary participation. The criteria guiding the new design of this service are attractiveness, meaningfulness, and contribution to growth capacity. Appreciation through challenging service, combined with opportunities for qualification, will permanently increase the willingness to perform military service. We are basing this on the Swedish military service model. We will create the conditions for military registration and monitoring before the end of this year." 

The legislative proposal announced in July 2025 is to be submitted to parliament by the end of August if possible, so that the new military service can start after parliamentary deliberations in 2026. However, the path to implementation is far from smooth. Although there is consensus within the conservative CDU/CSU on reintroducing compulsory military service, Minister Pistorius still has some convincing to do, especially among his own Social Democratic party.

At its federal party conference in June, the SPD agreed on a broad direction for a potential future military service model, but left maximum room for interpretation in the wording: the party committed itself to a new military service based on voluntary participation and adapted from the Swedish military service model. However, there should be no legally enforceable option to call up conscripts before all measures to increase voluntary enlistment have been exhausted.

The latter point in particular creates problems. While the intention is commendable, as it obliges the ministry to focus not only on regular measures to increase employer attractiveness, but also on the chronically neglected issues of reserve activation and conclusive personnel structure reform. The question remains: who determines when the required “full exhaustion” has been achieved? 

Should Pistorius want to introduce his new military service in 2026, he faces the considerable challenge of aligning his own party, notably the traditionally critical youth wing.

A potential reinstatement after the 2011 suspension can be implemented by law and does not require a constitutional amendment, so a parliamentary majority of the governing parties would suffice for the time being. Nevertheless, the blocking minority of the radical Right (AfD) and Left (Die LINKE) could also become an obstacle to implementation. Currently, the German constitution only provides for compulsory military service for men – so even if reactivated, the mandatory elements of any form of military service would only affect men. In this respect, the first lawsuits before the Federal Constitutional Court demanding equal treatment and, consequently, equal obligations for men and women regarding military service are likely to follow soon. However, without the necessary two-thirds majority in the German Parliament of the centrist parties, such an amendment to the constitution could not be pushed through. 

From consensus to implementation: scenarios and challenges

Once political consensus has been reached, Pistorius envisages sending a questionnaire to the entire 2008 cohort, as was done in the first round last year.  Men are required to complete the questionnaire, and suitable candidates will then be invited to attend a draft physical. To make military service more attractive, it will be paid at the same rate as regular active duty personnel. The length of basic military service has not yet been determined, but will have a minimum duration of six months.  Looking ahead, Pistorius is planning to increase the Bundeswehr's current training and accommodation capacity from 15,000 per year to more than 30,000 in 2029 – by then, there could already be a total of 100,000 service personnel.

These conscripts serve two main purposes: in the era of the old conscription system, the Bundeswehr drew a large part of its active personnel pool from conscripts who remained in the armed forces as enlisted personnel, non-commissioned officers, or officers after completing their military service. This could help alleviate the already urgent vacancy issue and facilitate the expansion of the armed forces to potentially 260,000 soldiers.

Even more relevant, however, is the contribution that conscription could make to the so-called growth and sustainability capabilities of the Bundeswehr. If mutual defence guarantees are invoked, the Bundeswehr needs a large pool of trained reservists to take on support tasks for the active troops. 

In addition to the political challenges on the path to implementation, the Bundeswehr is also confronted with numerous practical problems: military registration and monitoring must be almost completely rebuilt. The barracks infrastructure must be upgraded and expanded to accommodate twice the number of military personnel currently serving. The need for additional training personnel must be met — without creating gaps in the personnel required to carry out immediate tasks.

In its current state, the German Armed Forces are organisationally, equipment-wise and infrastructurally unable to implement a significant increase in personnel if compulsory service is reinstated. This affects all relevant Bundeswehr's support units where significant growth would be required. Even now, in a situation of lacking volunteers, the Military Counterintelligence Service is barely keeping up with security checks. In the medical corps, the situation is similar when it comes to conducting draft physicals.

Conscription as a symbolic issue of Germany's Zeitenwende 

In my view, the debate on conscription highlights two key challenges Germany faces on its path towards strategic readiness: the rigidity of fundamental debates and the extraordinary sluggishness of decision-making.

There is no question that conscription could be a building block in securing personnel growth – whether it is sufficient is questionable at best. Nevertheless, it seems almost the entire defence policy debate revolves around the issue of conscription, while the no less pressing problems in the reserves, the inefficiencies in the active personnel structure, and the growing bureaucratic bloat are ignored. The personnel issue in the Bundeswehr deserves and needs a systemic approach.

Furthermore, the pace at which strategic political decisions are made is also a major cause for concern. Effective leadership requires timely decision-making, yet the government and parliament face genuine challenges in implementing such decisive action in political reality.

They are tasked with enabling the Bundeswehr to fulfil its mission of defending the country and the alliance. The debate about new military service has now continued for over a year — a year that could have been used to prepare personnel and infrastructure. 

This year has now passed without any preparatory measures – time that we no longer have.

Stay tuned for Part 2!

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Uwe Horstmann co-founded Project A Ventures in 2012 as General Partner and has built Project A to be a leading European early-stage investor with over $1bn USD under management and having backed 100+ founders. In addition to Project A, Uwe serves as Reserve Officer in the German armed forces and advises the German Ministry of Defence in digital transformation issues.

Jack Wang is a software engineer turned product-driven tech investor and joined Project A in 2021 to lead the firm’s deep tech investing, which has grown to include DefenceTech. Prior to joining Project A, Jack worked in a variety of organisations such as Amazon and Macquarie Group across Australia, US and UK / Europe. Jack holds a MBA from London Business School and Bachelors of Engineering (Bioinformatics, 1st) from UNSW, Australia.

Jannic Meyer joined Project A initially contributing to what is now known as the Project A Studio, partnering with founders at the pre-idea stage, where he covered a variety of topics ranging from energy infrastructure to dual-use robotics and led our investment in ARX Robotics. He is now part of the investment team at Project A covering all things resilience.

Project A Ventures is one of the leading early-stage tech investors in Europe with offices in Berlin and London. In addition to 1.3 billion USD assets under management, Project A supports its 100+ portfolio companies with a platform team over 140 functional experts in key areas such as software and product development, business intelligence, brand, design, marketing, sales and recruiting. Project A have backed founders of Trade Republic, WorldRemit, Sennder, KRY, Spryker, Catawiki, Unmind and Voi as well as founders building in European Resilience: