Overview
- Government and parliamentary sources say negotiators agreed on key points that party leaders are due to endorse, paving the way for a Bundestag vote targeted for December.
- From early 2026 all 18-year-olds will receive a survey that men must answer and women may answer, including whether they would serve for at least six months.
- A full medical screening of an entire male cohort is planned from mid‑2027, and proposals to use an immediate lottery just to select candidates for screening have been dropped.
- If volunteer numbers fall short, the law would only state that a fair selection mechanism could apply, with detailed rules set in a later law and no automatic trigger for conscription without a Bundestag decision.
- The plan aims to grow the force toward roughly 260,000 active personnel plus about 200,000 reservists, with new staffing corridors by category, as officials also seek to recast screening as a service‑style health check.