Kretschmer criticizes lottery procedure in military service debate

Saxony's Minister President Michael Kretschmer (CDU) has criticized the move to introduce a so-called lottery system in the dispute over the new military service as not being expedient. "None of this is possible," he said in the "Spiegel" top-level interview with presenter Markus Feldenkirchen. The debate about a return to compulsory military service had been "wrongly buttoned up" from the outset. "As Helmut Kohl once said: if the vest is buttoned up wrong at the bottom, there will be no real result at the top."

The debate should be about getting more people involved - boys and girls, women and men - to serve their country. That is now being lost. Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) and his ministry had failed to sufficiently involve the population. "You have to achieve a social consensus. This cannot be done from the top down," said Kretschmer.

The new military service law was debated in the Bundestag for the first time on Thursday. The dispute mainly revolves around which mechanisms should be used if there are not enough volunteers for the Bundeswehr, as intended by the law, and whether all young men should be conscripted again in future. Pistorius once again spoke out in favor of this.

Instead, politicians from the CDU/CSU and SPD had proposed that young men should be called up by lot for conscription and, if necessary, later by random selection for compulsory service if the number of volunteers remains too low. Pistorius also expressed his willingness to compromise during the parliamentary debate: "I think that's okay, I'm open to it, the parliamentary process is there precisely to discuss this."