The German army has long been studying the recruitment of foreigners from other EU countries to fill its troop deficit. Now the features of these plans are more specific.
"The German army is growing, so we need qualified soldiers, so we are carefully considering all options," a spokesman for the German Defense Ministry said today in Berlin.
The spokesman said that the option of allowing foreign nationals to join the German army is stipulated in the German army's "White Paper" on security policy for 2016. "Now this will be integrated into the new human resources strategy of the army," he said.
Karl-Heinz Brunner, a defense expert for the Social Democratic Party, told the German daily Augsburger Algemeine Zeitung that he could envisage the recruitment of foreigners from the European Union into German forces.
"But when citizens from other countries (German forces) are joined in return for promises of German citizenship, this threatens to turn the German army into something like a mercenary army," he said.
For years, the German army has suffered from a lack of human resources.
"In the framework of European freedom of movement, here we can develop modern models," said Florian Han, a defense expert in the parliamentary bloc of the Christian Social Party of Bavaria, in a statement to the same newspaper.
For her part, said the head of the parliamentary bloc of the party, "Alternative for Germany" right-wing populist: "policy is devoid of common sense," explaining that the reason for the problem of lack of human resources in the German army is the suspension of compulsory recruitment, demanding an end to this situation.