[jsiepkes]

So it's a cold war law which is still in place but not being enforced.

Same for conscription laws in the Netherlands, which are also still active. They just don't ask anyone to report for conscription. It was even expanded a couple of years before the Ukraine war to also include women.

[jasonvorhe]

> The new military service law requires all men under 45 to seek approval from the Bundeswehr to leave the country for longer than three months. It also obliges the military career center to issue it.

New. Not cold war. This didn't exist before.

[eigenspace]

It's a re-instatement of a cold war era law that was suspended in 2011.

[nine_k]

The point is not when the law originated, but that it's being reinstated.

[eigenspace]

Okay sure, but I didnt say otherwise. I was just correcting someone who said something untrue.

[rvnx]

The main point was that they changed it so instead of being activated during crisis now it applies anytime, including in peacetime. Making it similar to the cold war provisions doesn't make it sounds better.

[eigenspace]

No, the one that said it was only activated during crisis was the post 2011 version.

[petcat]

Seems like a distinction without a difference to me.

[dmurray]

It's an important distinction because it prevents the defence of "oh it's just an old law, there are lots of old laws on the books that everyone knows aren't relevant, they can't be tidied up for political reasons".

It was suspended for the last 15 years! Surely it was easier to leave it suspended and unsuspending it is a conscious choice.

[dundarious]

Previously it was conditional, only in effect “in the event of tension or defense” (machine translation) which I will define below, but they are very exceptional circumstances -- AFAIK not ever invoked since unification.

The change this year was to make it applicable regardless of those conditions: “Outside the tension or defense case, §§ 3 [...]” shall apply.

"Tension" is defined by an imminent threat (e.g., invasion) and must be explicitly invoked by leadership. "Defense" is actual ongoing attack of territory, and must be explicitly invoked by the Bundestag.

I have used https://www.fr.de/politik/drastische-wehrpflicht-aenderung-m... to form my understanding. Can be read freely by prepending archive.is/newest/ to the URL.