Angela Merkel on conscription: I find it understandable that people now want to change military conscription again. But back then there were entire commissions arguing for suspending it. They said that within Europe we no longer had the problem of needing to defend ourselves militarily. Germany was not an exception in that thinking — the realities had simply changed. We didn’t abolish conscription entirely by removing it from the constitution — we suspended it. That means it can be modified again today with a simple majority.