Under the slogan "an army of the people", the Professional Syndicate of the Luxembourg Army (SPAL) held a briefing on Monday morning for the start of the new working year. To make that ambition a reality, the union rolled out a long list of demands.
It is common knowledge that SPAL and the army's leadership, headed by General Steve Thull, have not been seeing eye to eye for some time now.
Relations with the responsible minister, Yuriko Backes, are also said to be far from ideal. The two sides meet just once a year, which the union considers well below what is needed.
That suboptimal communication is cited as one of the reasons for poor morale in the army. To gather concrete evidence, the union is calling for an objective analysis of personnel satisfaction.
The core issue, according to SPAL, is a shortage of staff that puts a heavy load on individual soldiers. To address that, the union is calling, among other steps, for the creation of an army reserve force.
President Christian Schleck laid out how such a unit might be pulled together and what tasks it could take on.
The country, he said, needed to look at the options available, including recruiting personnel leaving the army but keeping them on in the reserve for a certain period.
At the very least, a force the size of a platoon should be envisaged, and later a company, gradually providing back-up to the personnel currently in service.
Such a reserve, in his view, could be deployed above all during national crises, such as floods or natural disasters, wherever operational readiness was needed.
Other countries, he added, are already much further ahead on this front.
"Work-life balance" is a term that comes up regularly in discussions of working life today, and the army is no exception. Combining a career with family life requires specific measures.
A crèche, Schleck said, would give families extra support when personnel are away on missions or even just on exercises. Service housing, too, would need to be brought back, ideally halfway between Arlon and Diekirch, all the more so given the upcoming addition of the binational battalion.
On that binational battalion, SPAL points out that a number of legal questions are still unresolved when it comes to the stationing of Luxembourg soldiers and equipment abroad.
It should also be clear, the union argues, that the personnel sent to Arlon will be replaced by new recruits at the Härebierg barracks.
On training, the union wants a sizeable share of it to take place at a training centre in Luxembourg in future.
Part of the basic training, Schleck said, could be centralised there, not as specialised training as such, but, for instance, as a common military core curriculum.
That would carry a number of advantages:
The Luxembourg Army currently employs around 1,200 people, but this number is expected to rise to just under 2,000 by 2035.
As for the incoming General, Claude Robinet, who takes over command of the army from Steve Thull at the end of this month, the union is cautiously hopeful that a productive working relationship will be possible.
The official handover ceremony for the Chief of Defence is due to take place next Monday, 28 September, in the park in Mersch.
Overnight from Friday to Saturday, drones caused major disruptions to air traffic at Findel Airport. While the exact background to the incident is not yet known, Prime Minister Luc Frieden subsequently said that the government would take the matter very seriously.
On the sidelines of the press conference, Schleck was also asked about what had happened at Findel.
At this stage, he said, they did not yet know the extent of the army's involvement. As far as SPAL's position on the defence budget was concerned, though, the budget should indeed be supported, but the funds had to be used intelligently.
Above all, when incidents like this occurred, one had to look at how the defence budget could be put to use in future to detect such threats earlier, or to improve communication, in order to guarantee the necessary security for Findel and, in this case, for the wider population.
In any case, the Luxembourg Army does possess certain capabilities and experience in handling various drone models, which could offer real added value.
