Military service without citizenship? “No bans on thinking”

The Ministry of Defense is examining whether the path to service as a soldier in the Bundeswehr should also be made clear for candidates without a German passport. The FDP and the Union are open. But criticism comes too.

The debate about further opening up the Bundeswehr to applicants without a German passport is gaining momentum.

“Fundamentally, we have to think in a much more European way when looking for suitable young people who are willing to serve in the Bundeswehr,” said the chairwoman of the Defense Committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP), to the “Rheinische Post”. This also includes the consideration “that soldiers without a German passport can get one more quickly through successful service in the Bundeswehr.”

“We wouldn’t be the first armed forces in Europe”

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is already having models of compulsory service examined and is also having a task force examine the entire human resources system. Last week, the SPD politician was open to soldiers without a German passport. “We would not be the first armed forces in Europe to do this,” Pistorius said. There are people in the country who live in Germany in the second or third generation but do not yet have German citizenship.

Recruiting men and women who already live in Germany but do not have German citizenship is just one conceivable model. Opening it up to citizens from EU or NATO states is a different model. Individual partners take completely different paths. The US armed forces have been opened to migrants who can hope for citizenship in return. France traditionally has an association with the Foreign Legion in which the teams come from abroad, but the officers are French – and therefore a completely different practice than Germany.

The Greens are strictly against it

However, clear rejection of considerations for military service without a passport comes from the ranks of the Greens. Defense policy group spokeswoman Sara Nanni said she was strictly against it. Candidates living in Germany could use the now reformed citizenship law and become German. She is also in favor of Germany sending its own citizens for foreign missions.

Troops should be increased

It’s not just Germany that has the problem of not finding a sufficient number of citizens to volunteer for military service. However, the shortage of skilled workers and an aging society make things particularly difficult for the Bundeswehr. There are also requirements for physical fitness and the willingness to work at different locations. The goal of going from currently around 181,000 soldiers to 203,000 soldiers by 2031 seems almost impossible to achieve.

The Ministry of Defense in Berlin countered the impression that it wanted to fill personnel gaps with ongoing considerations. The exams are still at the very beginning. “How do we deal with foreigners in the armed forces in the future is something that was of course also taken up because we simply don’t want to be restricted from thinking,” said a spokeswoman. There are already exceptional cases for soldiers when there is an “official need”. It is easier for the Bundeswehr to employ civilian employees.

Previous and fundamental concerns, for example about the loyalty of soldiers from other countries of origin in the case of defense, seem to have faded into the background in the current debate. According to insiders, the Bundeswehr is experiencing the fact that these questions can be full of conflict in individual cases when Russian-German soldiers are to be recruited to train Ukrainians.

AfD against poaching recruits

The CDU defense politician Johann Wadephul told the “Rheinische Post” that the idea of ​​opening up to applicants without nationality was fundamentally correct, but the design was crucial. “Does this option only apply to citizens of EU or NATO states or even beyond? Is complete knowledge of the German language necessary?”

On the other hand, Rüdiger Lucassen, defense policy spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group, warns against the destruction of the concept of “citizens in uniform” and a “zero-sum game” by the allies. “The Bundeswehr would primarily attract interested parties from the poorer EU states with higher salaries and social entitlements. Romanians or Bulgarians who would then become infantrymen in the Bundeswehr would then be missing from the armed forces on the south-eastern flank of Europe,” he says. “Poaching recruits does not increase Europe’s military effectiveness.”