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Germany's armed forces ('Bundeswehr') transformation has been taking shape since German Defense Minister, Thomas de Maizière, made his forces' deployment decisions and gave his 'to do list' for overall restructuring of the Bundeswehr admin to the subordinate 'civilian' upper authority BAWV and the respective four Military Districts Authorities (WBV North, South, West, East).
The result of this complete overhaul will be the abolition of military district organizations with the dubious creation of separate and independent branches on equal footing like the BAWV that has been the working horse for the vast civil admin issues, reporting directly to the ministry by bundling and overseeing the respective middle organisations (WBV) that have been the oversight authority for local branches called Bundeswehr Services Centers (BwDLZ).
The current clear structure from top to bottom, like in military organization structures (group, platoon, company, ..., brigade, division) will be demolished to make way for a complicated network structure.
Whether or not this approach is in accordance with the German constitution remains to be seen. The civil servants' association within the Bundeswehr (Verband der Beamten der Bundeswehr e.V. "vbb") is very critical about this 'odd, murky and fuzzy' new interpretation of the article 87b by de Maizière. A judicial expertise of a renowned lawyer for constitutional affairs, having ordered by the vbb federal leadership and recently obtained, has been showing clear indications of 'unconstitutionality'.
The mixing-up of Bundeswehr forces and admin by allowing high military personnel to lead civilian branches is only one item to be questioned in the shake-up of the admin whose size will possibly be reduced to 55k as compromise number of 60k from former Defense Minister, Baron zu Guttenberg and the 'external Bundeswehr technical commission' headed by chairman Weise of the Federal Labor Agency ('BA') of 50k.
Fuzzy structures don't sell to newspapers or other media, the public is not very interested in this either.
But, the lawyer's analysis about the possible unconstitutionality of de Maizière's mindset might penetrate the minds of the politicians of all factions of the Bundestag. Well, the people in the parliamentary committee for defense affairs should be convinced first.
The deputy defense minister and state secretary, Beemelmans, seems to have little faith in his own restructuring efforts.
In a conversation with the association's leadership about a planned transfer of some 2.000 civilian Bundeswehr accounting personnel to the Federal Admin Authority "BVA", supervised by the Ministry of the Interior, Beemelmans pointed out that the new employer BVA will guarantee more job security than what might possibly happen to them regarding future restructuring and transforming of the forces and the respective civilian branches.
De Maizière and Beemelmans would like to silence their critics by Tibetan prayer-wheeling 'don't discuss this endlessly - go ahead with the reform "in lockstep, march".
But, this arrogance of theirs toward legitimate questions by soldiers' and civil employees' associations can finally lead to a court's injunction by the Federal Constitutional Court due to this weird approach of the government in the 'new orientation of the Bundeswehr'.
Let's hope that all politicians of the parliamentary committee are savvy enough to put their noses into the lawyer's expertise and the constitution.
