A German politician, Johann Wadephul, deputy chairman of the Union’s parliamentary group in the Bundestag, has called for the re-introduction of the military draft in the event of a government led by his party. He made the remarks to the “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland” in a recent interview, emphasizing the need for a growing and conventionally defensible German military.
According to Wadephul, the reinstatement of the draft should be among the first legislative measures of the new coalition government. He advocates for a “contingent draft” system, where all men and women of a certain age group would be subject to a mandatory review, but only a selected portion would be inducted into the military.
Wadephul argues that new military equipment, such as ships, planes and tanks, would be meaningless without a sufficient number of personnel to operate them, thus making the gradual introduction of the draft necessary. He expressed his expectation that the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens would not reject the idea of a contingent draft, which is modeled after Scandinavian systems.
As a prominent figure in the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Wadephul stated that his party would push for the inclusion of a contingent draft model in a potential coalition agreement, citing the need for a military draft to be reintroduced.