The Women’s Union of the CDU is calling for the recently introduced military service questionnaire to be expanded and for women to be required to complete it. In a motion prepared for the CDU federal party conference and obtained by the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND) on Friday, the CDU women argue that the newly adopted voluntary military service model should be “further developed without delay” and that women should be more strongly included.
In the long term, the proposal states, women should also be required to perform compulsory service in the military or in the social sector. According to the motion, filling out the new Bundeswehr letter should be mandatory for both women and men. The questionnaire should also be expanded. If an individual indicates they do not wish to serve in the military, the form should ask whether they could instead imagine working in the social sector or in civil protection and disaster response.
This information would then be passed on to welfare organizations and civil protection groups such as the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) or the German Red Cross so they can directly approach interested individuals.
The CDU women also support a mandatory “year of service” in Germany, which would require an amendment to the Basic Law. The idea is that every young person in a given age group would be required to complete a year of service, either with the Bundeswehr or in the social sector. Under the constitution, only men can currently be conscripted for military service or required to perform civilian service.
A new, initially voluntary military service model came into force in Germany on January 1, 2026. For now, all men and women born in 2008 or later are being contacted and asked to complete a questionnaire assessing their suitability and capability for service in the armed forces. Men are required to respond; women are not. If the voluntary model does not attract enough recruits, the governing CDU-SPD coalition reserves the right to introduce a needs-based conscription system.
At the same time, the Junge Union (JU) has set a deadline for the government regarding conscription. If the legally required increase in personnel cannot be met through the voluntary model, the CDU should advocate for the “reintroduction of mandatory military service from July 1, 2027,” according to a JU motion submitted to the CDU party conference and reported by Focus on Friday. The key date for achieving the staffing target for active military personnel would be January 1, 2027.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) has previously stated that he intends to have it reviewed “by 2027 at the latest” whether enough volunteers have come forward to meet the goal of increasing the number of active soldiers from today’s 184,000 to around 260,000 by 2035. However, the introduction of needs-based conscription would remain a political decision and would also require a new legislative process in the Bundestag.
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