Germany prepares for possible return of civilian service as conscription debate simmers

The German government is quietly preparing the legal and organisational foundations for a new civilian alternative service, the Zivildienst, should the Bundestag ever vote to reactivate military conscription. The Family Ministry confirmed on Tuesday that it had contacted 23 large associations over the winter, including Caritas, the Workers' Welfare Association (AWO) and the German Red Cross, asking whether they could offer placements for conscientious objectors.

The ministry's groundwork

A ministry spokeswoman told dpa that 22 of the 23 organisations had indicated their infrastructure and posts would be ready to provide a "diverse offering" for substitute service personnel. The survey was described as a precaution: compulsory military service has been suspended since July 2011, and the current coalition has not taken a decision to bring it back. Since the start of 2026, however, young men born in 2008 or later face mandatory medical screening designed to channel volunteers into the Bundeswehr's planned expansion.

There is no civilian service as long as we have no conscription. But if conscription should ever become necessary, we must already have prepared the basis for a modern civilian service.

The ministry intends to present its plans formally after the parliamentary summer recess. Work on what a substitute service would look like is being carried out under the draft Federal Society Service Act, the spokeswoman said.

How conscription could return

Under the current legal architecture, the Bundestag can activate a "demand-based conscription" (Bedarfs-Wehrpflicht) if voluntary recruitment falls short of the Bundeswehr's targets. That trigger would also revive the Basic Law clause stating that anyone who refuses armed service on grounds of conscience can be obliged to perform an alternative service. The number of Zivis would depend on "whether, when and to what extent conscription is ordered under Section 2a of the Conscription Act," the ministry spokeswoman noted.

Welfare associations push back

Social organisations reacted with a mixture of conditional readiness and open scepticism. Caritas president Eva Welskop-Deffaa warned that a demand-based conscription model, which would draft only as many young men as the military needs and select them on objective criteria, would produce very few conscientious objectors. A civilian service under those conditions would be "a footnote" and "numerically bear no resemblance to the civilian service we knew as a substitute for general conscription," she said.

Anyone who gives the impression that the staffing problems of social institutions can be solved this way is raising completely false expectations.

The Paritätischer Gesamtverband insisted that any new compulsory service must not come at the expense of existing voluntary programmes. SoVD chief Michaela Engelmeier told the Funke media group that instead of relying on compulsion, the state should strengthen voluntary engagement and reliably fund the Federal Voluntary Service and the Voluntary Social Year.

Opposition criticism

Left Party leader Ines Schwerdtner accused the government of using young people as "state-mandated cheap labour" to patch up a welfare state it had "saved to the bone over years." She argued the state should not prescribe how young people spend a year of their lives, whether in military or civilian service. FDP general secretary Martin Hagen called the preparatory work "an admission of failure by the CDU, CSU and SPD," saying it showed the coalition had no confidence in its own efforts to reach Bundeswehr strength through volunteers. He urged making the reserve a central element of defence policy instead.

The numbers context

In 2010, the last full year before suspension, roughly 80,000 conscripts served as Zivis in nursing homes, rescue services and youth centres. Over the entire conscription era, the official tally reached about 2.7 million. The replacement Federal Voluntary Service, launched in July 2011, offers around 35,000 places annually. Meanwhile, applications for conscientious-objector status are already climbing: 5,862 were filed in the first half of 2026, compared with 3,867 in all of 2025 and 2,998 in 2024, according to the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland.

For the event that conscription were reintroduced, there would also have to be a corresponding substitute service. And that the Family Ministry is preparing for all eventualities and different situations and scenarios is, I believe, very wise and correct.

CDU/CSU parliamentary group leader Thorsten Frei told n-tv that there was no new debate within the coalition, but that a government must be ready for situations where decisions might have to be taken quickly.