Women face prospect of army draft

Europe Correspondent

Under German law, women cannot be forced to carry arms and so serve the year in military service that men must do.

Recently one young man, Alexander Dory, refused to be conscripted on the grounds that he was being discriminated against, because women are not subject to the same rules. He brought his case to the Court in Luxembourg, where the Advocate General is due to give his opinion on it on Thursday.

Mr Dory claims the German law breaches the EU principle of equal treatment for men and women as regards access to employment, vocational training and promotion, and working conditions. After he received a questionnaire in preparation for the physical examination for military service, Mr Dory applied for exemption from compulsory military service and from call-up on this basis. Mr Dory claims there are no longer any objective grounds which can justify excluding women, for reasons relating solely to their sex, from military service involving the use of arms.

He insists that the year-long compulsory military service for men discriminates against them because the law says that women can if they want perform military service and so there is no justification for them being excluded from conscription. Each year, more than 125,000 German youths are conscripted for a year' service.