The Parliamentary Defence Commissioner, Henning Otte, has urged the Federal Ministry of Defence (BMVg) to limit the recently announced promotion freeze for field sergeants in time and restrict it as narrowly as possible. Speaking to the “Tagesspiegel” on Tuesday, Otte stated that “potential must not be destroyed, and legitimate expectations and trust must not be disappointed”. He stressed that after the necessary foundational work is complete, “the promotion freeze must be lifted quickly, as legal certainty and predictability are important for the entire force”.
The ministry, led by Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD), had announced the shift last weekend, responding to a court ruling from the previous year that had emphasized performance criteria over merely accumulating years of service for promotion. While Otte acknowledged that the legal discrepancy needed to be corrected, he cautioned, “that also creates uncertainty”. He noted that the current promotion freeze, coupled with planned reductions in service positions, was instead causing significant unrest throughout the ranks.
Thomas Erndl (CSU), the Defence Policy Spokesman for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, echoed these concerns, also demanding that Pistorius and his department swiftly develop a cohesive concept for modernizing career law and pay structures. Without such a plan, he cautioned, the Bundeswehr risked “not only losing the trust of the entire NCO corps-the backbone of our armed forces-but also harming the entire generation of personnel”. Adding to the criticism, Sara Nanni, his colleague from The Greens, criticized the ministry in the “Tagesspiegel”, arguing that the Ministry of Defence had poorly prepared for and communicated the necessary reforms to the troops following the court ruling, stating that “the BMVg once again failed to anticipate a wave of outrage”.