BERLIN (AA) – The German government has announced plans on Tuesday to increase the army’s personnel to adapt to new security challenges.
Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said the Bundeswehr will recruit an additional 7,000 soldiers and 4,400 civilian personnel in the next seven years, as part of a new plan to beef up the military.
“The 25-year-long period of shrinking the Bundeswehr is over. It is time for the Bundeswehr to grow again,” von der Leyen said in a news conference in Berlin.
She argued that Germany’s growing contribution to international peace and security operations, and new security challenges had made it necessary to abandon the post Cold-War plans of reducing the size of the army.
German army had around 585,000 soldiers in 1990, but reductions since then have taken its size down to 177,000 today. During the same period, civilian personnel dropped from 215,000 to 87,000.
In recent years, the German government has been advocating a more active foreign policy supported by military measures.
Germany, Europe’s economic heavyweight, has the fourth-largest defense budget within NATO, and is planning to increase defense expenditure.
The German parliament has allocated 34.3 billion euros ($39 billion) for the Defense Ministry for the fiscal year 2016, up from €32.3 billion in 2015.
